


Forever Is A Long Time

by domini_moonbeam



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Romance, Slow Burn, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-06 20:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18396170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domini_moonbeam/pseuds/domini_moonbeam
Summary: 'He stopped near the front door when he heard that name, when he breathed deep that heavy stench of death that lingered in the once safe walls of his home. If his heart beat, it might have stopped.'Slight AU. Bella is already an immortal. No character deaths! Dark and moody but romantic.





	1. Chapter 1

Before he reached the house he could feel the wrongness. The stillness, the smell of death, and the mangled rush of his family’s thoughts into jumbled words, panics and names. His own being one of the majors tossed about in old minds. _‘Edward’s here. What will he say? How do I explain this? Stop thinking!’_ It was Alice. She was always panicking but it wasn’t like her not to know what to do. And then he heard the other name, whispered in other minds that all seemed to be standing in the dining room. _‘Bella.’_

 

He stopped near the front door when he heard that name, when he breathed deep that heavy stench of death that lingered in the once safe walls of his home. If his heart beat it might have stopped. A second later he was standing in the dining room. He had wanted to stay calm, wanted not to care, but there she was—or what was left of her—laid out on the dining table. Of all the places, how could they put her there?

 

“What have you done?” he hissed, not even sure who it was aimed at. Her dark hair was tangled in filth, her face bloody and distorted by swollen flesh and mashed bones. Her lips were parted, blood crusted in their corners. There was no heartbeat, no breath, no warmth. Her arm was broken, bent grotesquely and leaving her pale hand to dangle off the edge of the large table. Her clothes were torn and he could tell where they had been pulled into place again to cover the parts of her that should never have been exposed. There was some awful relief beneath the wave of crippling rage. It wasn’t his family. Edward could have understood with time if one of his clan had slipped up and she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, if they had drained her of blood and life. But his brother’s would never have raped her, would never have beaten her with such brutality.

 

“We found her,” Alice spoke, he wasn’t even sure whether it was aloud or in her thoughts. “I saw it but it was too late.”

 

He stood tense as he listened carefully. Four men, gone by the time she and Jasper reached the spot. “Why would you see her future anyway?” Edward tried to sound cold, but his voice begged to break either with rage or misery.

 

“I was keeping an eye on her,” Alice admitted, sounding ashamed of her obvious failure. “She was important to you.”

 

His chest hurt at the sadness in her voice and now more than ever she was his sister. “I didn’t even know her.”

 

“You watched her at school,” Alice persisted, Jasper rubbing her arm gently either to sooth her or keep her from approaching her brother. “We’ve all noticed. You even took that art class just to be closer, just to watch her longer.”

 

His jaw ticked, but he wouldn’t admit it. If he hadn’t been willing before, he certainly wasn’t going to say it now. Carlisle was standing nearest to the table but on the other side, his eyes downcast and his face grave. Esme looked like she was going to cry, pressed into the corner of the kitchen and watching him. “Where are Em and Rosalie?” Edward spoke but he was still staring at the girl on the table.

 

“Hunting the men that did this,” Jasper said quietly, he was standing close to his wife and just barely blocking her from Edward in case things turned ugly. Sometimes it was hurtful that Jasper still couldn’t always trust them, but on nights like this he understood why.

 

“They won’t do anything unless you say so,” Carlisle added.

 

Edward forced himself to harden like the stone he was. “What do I care?” He shook his head when Carlisle started to walk toward him, concern etched across his perfect features. “I didn’t know her. Tell them to leave the humans and come home.” He shivered as he forced himself to turn away from the table, from her body. His lips curled as he hissed at Alice. “Why would you bring the body here? You know what will happen if they find us with it!” It was so much easier to be angry.

 

Jasper bared his teeth, sliding easily into that space between his brother and his wife. Alice was grabbing at his shoulder to glare pleadingly at Edward. “I didn’t think you’d want me to leave her there like that on some dirt road. I thought you’d want to see her, say goodbye, something…”

 

“You thought wrong, Alice,” he hissed before walking away. His legs had never wanted to buckle more, but he made it out of the house. It wasn’t true, that he didn’t know Bella, he knew her plenty—it was just that she had never known him. He knew the way she shied away from large groups, how she would lose time when painting in those dingy art classes, how she smiled during a thunder storm but sulked when it was too windy. He knew how she wished that she could play the piano, how she would sit at the shabby one in the music room when no one was around and place her fingers on the keys—how her headphones would fill her head with the sound of the notes but she would never bring herself to press down.

 

He had watched and dreamed in a way that he never had before, but he knew his rule well enough to leave it at that. No humans. He couldn’t do that to another person, couldn’t be the cause of that misery whether it was the death or the longing to be.

 

From his distance in the trees he saw Emmett and Rosalie arrive home. Both paused at the front door, looking back at him. He listened and heard the names of scumbags unfold in Emmett’s head, along with an address. It was a small blessing to be understood by his family in the case of Em, and a curse in the case of Alice.

 

He took off into the forest, the image of her ruined body dancing in his head just beside those sweet ones of her fingers hovering over tarnished keys. How long had it been since he killed someone? Would they still have her stolen scent on them? Would he feel any better after they were dead?

 

 

* * *

 

Alice sighed and stared at the body on the table. She had had such hopes for her, for the happiness of her brother.

 

“What should we do with her?” Esme whispered.

 

Carlisle reached out for his wife and ushered her toward the stairs. “Leave her here for now. I have a feeling he’ll want to say goodbye when he’s alone. We’ll deal with the rest in the morning.”

 

* * *

 

Darkness only got darker as evening set into midnight. Lightning streaked the sky as though to give desperate shreds of light to the black. When thunder cracked, the body on the table convulsed. But no one was around to see it. Rain was pouring down outside when Bella’s eyes burst open. Bruises had already faded, along with scrapes and cuts. She saw the strange ceiling, the odd walls and tall windows. Her ribs cracked back into their rightful places, forcing her to bite back a scream as she rolled off of the table. A dining room table. Bella shuddered at the idea, gasping when her knees and palms hit the floor. One of her arms gave way with the sickly snapping of already cracked bones.

 

She screamed. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t really been able to think. But then there she was, faster than any human could be—Rosalie. Bella looked up, lips still blood crusted and parted to swallow at air, tears streaming down her face. The blond that stood over her looked completely horrified, and sadly, horror of any kind came wrapped in anger for that particular vampire.

 

“What are you?” Rose snarled, shoulders drawn back as she looked at the girl on the floor with sharp eyes.

 

“Babe?” Emmett had come into the room, his body lurching to a stop as he too saw the now living girl. “What the—”

 

Bella sucked a breath and forced herself to her feet, lunging for the backdoor. Rose hissed, too fast for her, those perfect cold fingers wrapping around Bella’s neck and slamming her back against one of the tall windows. It cracked, spider webs running along the entire panel. “What are you?” the blonde shouted this time and Bella could feel others moving in the house. That was when she realized fully whose house she was in. Tears streaked down her face as she gasped for air around that tight grip. It was her own fault for not running when she had the chance, before they found out what she was. She had known what they were, had known to keep her distance.

 

“Rose!” Esme screamed.

 

Emmett was beside the blonde, his hand on her outstretched arm but he wasn’t looking at the oddity pinned to the glass, no, his gaze was only for his wife. “Baby,” he whispered, desperate to calm her. “Let her go.”

 

“What is she?” Rosalie jerked Bella forward, the toes of her shoes scraping the floor. “What are you?” the blonde hissed in her face.

 

Bella shivered, it wasn’t the first time she’d been captured by vampires. “I’m alive.” She couldn’t help herself, the words came up through the gravel of her throat, her eyes wild with pain. “ _What are you_?”

 

It was a taunt, meant to dig deep. She couldn’t say she was entirely surprised when the blonde goddess slammed her to the glass again, this time the window shattered, throwing her body out into the rain. She rolled across the grass, over the yard and landed in a heap near the edge of the forest.

 

“Rosalie!” Esme cried, grabbing onto the blonde before she could charge out into the rain.

 

Bella lay in the grass for the beat of thunder and then forced herself upright again. It was pointless running from vampires, she knew that. Even when she wasn’t half-dead, she was faster than a human, but never faster than a vampire. They always found her. Always. And always she would run anyway. She was in the midst of trees when the bone in her arm started cracking back into place, sending screams from her throat and forcing her knees to buckle in the mud.

 

A leg hit her back, pushing her down flat before a hand rolled her over. The blonde was straddling her suddenly, rage and rain still painting that face. Bella could hear others shouting at the vampire, but all she could watch was that fist rearing back, sharp knuckles aimed at her face. The same question poured from her lips and Bella shivered in the mud. All she could hope was that that fist could do the job, could finally put her down—but she knew it wouldn’t, none before it ever had.

 

She didn’t close her eyes when it fell, wanting to see this one coming because she was sure it’d kill her at least for a while. A hand came from nowhere and caught that seemingly delicate arm. The blonde hissed but was pulled up from the ground and thrown to the side all too easily. Bella stared in shock as he stepped over her with one leg and roared at the other woman, the sound breaking through the forest like another roll of thunder. She blinked up through the rain to look at him, her heart pounding against the cage of her chest until her ribs ached.

 

Edward looked down at her, surprise and confusion playing across his features. She hadn’t been turned. Just as surely as she had been dead hours ago, she was now alive. He watched the smallest miserable smile crawl over her lips before her eyes closed and her body collapsed into unconsciousness.

 

Alice and Jasper were waiting at the house when he carried her back, Esme following him from the yard and Emmett stayed in the woods to work his wife through her temper.

 

“How is this possible?” he whispered as he stepped back into the house.

 

Alice looked just as mesmerized as her mate, both staring at the girl in his arms. “I don’t know.” He heard their fruitless thoughts.

 

“I’m calling Carlisle,” Esme said in a hushed tone as she went to the phone. He had left to take care of an emergency patient only an hour before. “Take her to the office. Alice, honey, clean her up.”

 

He tensed when Alice stepped up to take the girl from his arms and instead of handing her over, he walked to the office, knowing that his sister would have to follow. The body he held was human, he was sure of it, it felt fragile and he could hear her pulse flowing to the rhythm of her heart. But it wasn’t possible. Eventually Alice talked him into setting her down and leaving the room but he didn’t go far—lingering in the main hall all night and exchanging brief words with his adoptive father as the man rushed home.

 

* * *

 

Bella woke with a start, but this time without the lightning or the pain. She stared at a different ceiling, florescent lights glaring with the sort of intensity only ever found in doctor’s offices or dentists. She sat up slowly. Her hair was wet and she was wearing scrubs. Had someone bathed her? She shuddered at the idea, swinging her legs over the edge of the exam table. It was a doctor’s office, a private one from what she could tell.

 

When she noticed Dr. Cullen sitting off to the side at the desk, looking over papers with a scrunched face, she sucked a breath and remembered where she was and who had found her out. He sat back and looked at her, as though they had been in the midst of a deep conversation. “You seem to be in perfect health, Miss Swan.”

 

She shivered but stayed where she was, sitting on the exam bed. He stood and she tightened her grip on the edge of the bed. She wanted to look for a door but couldn’t bear the thought of looking away as he approached. “You could say that.”

 

“I have a few questions, I hope you won’t mind if I ask.”

 

Bella sat rigid. Did she have a choice?

 

* * *

 

Edward was standing in the living room, staring down the corridor toward the office door.

 

“How could you not know there was something wrong with her?”  Rose was standing nearest the stairs, Emmett looking tired but patient nearby. “Couldn’t you hear her thoughts? All that time you spent staring at her and you couldn’t bother to listen in a little?” She was still raging through her hush.

 

He understood her panic. Rosalie never liked being surprised and if she thought her family was threatened she was first to defend. They were usually good qualities.

 

“Can’t you hear her thoughts?” Alice whispered, finding a kinder way to phrase her sister’s inquiry.

 

“Of course.” He stared at the hall and sighed. “Sometimes,” Edward amended and felt his family staring at him. “I just thought she was quiet or…”

 

“Crazy?” Rose snapped.

 

Esme sighed.

 

“Jazz, can you still feel her?” Edward asked softly, the blond man was standing nearby at the gape of the hall, but with his back to it.

 

“Yes,” he answered. “She isn’t as afraid anymore, but there’s something… defeated, about it.”

 

“Is there anything different about her?” Alice asked her mate.

 

He hesitated and then answered carefully. “If I don’t reach out, I can’t feel her at all,” Jasper admitted uneasily. “I should have noticed before but... I just thought she was calm.”

 

Rosalie scoffed and Esme finally stood with a growl. “I think we’re going to alarm her if we’re crowding her like this. You two go upstairs.” She waved off Rose and Emmett. It took some arguing but eventually the blond stormed off, her mate in her wake.

 

They all tensed when the office door opened and Carlisle slipped out, joining them in the living room. “Alice, can you get her some of your clothes. I don’t want to send her home in scrubs.”

 

The dark-haired woman nodded and vanished.

 

“What is she?” Esme asked quietly, as though the question might be rude.

 

Carlisle took a moment to organize his thoughts and it was all Edward needed to shift uneasily. “She’s immortal. But she doesn’t need to feed, isn’t dead at all.”

 

Esme looked astonished. “How could we not have seen one like her before?”

 

“I wasn’t even sure they really existed. The Volturi spoke of them, said they were the best of companions for vampires because…” His thoughts trailed and Edward curled his lips with a snarl and finished his father’s sentence. “Because they’re an endless fountain.”

 

“But they were only a fairytale, a dream of theirs. I never thought they were real.” Carlisle sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

 

Alice passed them as she returned to the office with an armful of clothing, including shoes.

 

“She’s getting anxious again,” Jasper whispered before shivering, his back tight to the wall as he looked around.

 

Edward moved closer to his brother. “What is it?”

 

“Trapped. I feel trapped,” Jasper hissed as though he had been the one cornered. “She feels like we’ve caught her.”

 

Esme moved closer to her husband, looking at him with those pleading eyes of hers, begging him to make it right. Carlisle stroked her cheek gently. “Alright. It’s been a long night. Edward, can you drive her home?”

 

Edward turned around to look at his father. “But she knows what we are—”

 

“And we know what she is,” Carlisle said with his unwavering calm. “Take her home, son?”

 

* * *

 

She thought it was a cruel trick when she got into the car, but soon enough he was sitting in the driver’s seat and they were speeding through the night that edged on morning. It felt like hours that they didn’t speak, even though it had only been minutes. Her hand came up to stifle a yawn.

 

Edward glanced at her curiously, though his face wouldn’t have given it away. “Do you sleep?”

 

Bella tensed when he spoke, focusing her eyes ahead on the road. “Sometimes.”

 

“How old are you?” he asked, the speed of the car slowing to make her even more uneasy.

 

“Seventeen,” she said. _‘Seventy-two’_ slipped across her usually quiet thoughts.

 

He stroked the steering wheel with his thumb. “You live with your father?”

 

“Adoptive.” She tensed and looked at him, her eyes wider. “He doesn’t know. You don’t have to…” Bella swallowed hard and forced her gaze forward again. “He doesn’t know.”

 

“What do you do when they realize you don’t age?” Edward continued to probe, hopeful that more revealing truths would slip through her thoughts, though they seemed carefully quiet.

 

She didn’t answer right away, seeming to be trying to decide whether or not to lie. “I usually get placed in a family and say that I’m fifteen. It gives me two or three years with them, and then I can pull a few on my own. Eventually I go to another State and start over again.”

 

“How many times have you died?”

 

Bella smiled before she could help herself. “Today?” she joked but as soon as she realized that she had, her smile quickly vanished. “A few times, I guess.” _‘Too many.’_

 

“You don’t know the number?” he tried again, hearing her thoughts and wondering if she knew he could.

 

“Twenty or thirty,” she said too quickly. _‘This decade,’_ her thoughts added darkly as though to mock herself. She definitely didn’t know he could hear those, but it seemed that she needed prompting before he could catch something flowing through her calm.

 

Suddenly she tensed as they rounded a corner and started up a dirt road. “This is close enough.” She looked at him and when their eyes met, she blanched. Even an immortal was afraid of him, and why wouldn’t she be? She was breakable and full of what his kind loved most. She was prey that could heal, blood that could regenerate. She was the cup that would never empty, the toy that would never need replacing. Looking at her now, her face so human but so comfortable in the shadows, he could see why she would hide, why she would be afraid of them. “I don’t want to wake Jim.”

 

He tried not to growl. “Jim?”

 

She was holding onto her seatbelt, trapped in his stare. “My adoptive father…”

 

The car slowed and stopped. He could see her house down the road, a shabby little place surrounded by trees and mud.

 

Bella undid her seatbelt but his hand grabbed hers before she could reach for the door handle and jump out of the car. She felt warm to him and he wondered if he felt cold to her. He could feel her pulse pick up and hear her heart throb with dread. “We aren’t going to hurt you,” he wanted to clarify that ‘he’ wouldn’t hurt her, but somehow that felt too intimate. “But we’d like to know you better.” She was still tense, so he let go of her hand, even though it pained him to do so.

 

She opened the door but waited on the edge of her seat when he spoke again.

 

“Can I pick you up for class tomorrow?”

 

“Do I have a choice?” Her voice was small, resigned to something grim.

 

He wanted to frown but resisted. “Of course.”

 

She swallowed and got out of the car. “Then no.” Bella paused, squeezing the cold metal of the doors edge. “But I’ll see you in class.” She added before closing it.

 

He watched her disappear down the street. She was fast, faster than any human could dream, and light on her feet. There was more than just immortality there. He stared at the house on the dark street long after she had slipped inside. She wasn’t human, couldn’t be ruined by him like that, and had a lifetime like his own behind her. For the first time in decades, he couldn’t wait for class tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

The first half of his day was anxiously filled with waiting. He wasn’t particularly fond of waiting when there was something he actually sought. So he had spent the time reflecting on the things he wanted to ask and the few things that he knew. The longer the day went on the more he suspected that she had ditched all together, he would have left to find her wherever she was hiding, but in the hall he passed her fading scent. She was there, somewhere.

 

It took everything he had not to track her through the halls. He remembered Carlisle’s words from last night. He had explained again what he knew of her kind. Stronger and faster than humans, with a life that could never be fully extinguished. They might have been gods if the vampires hadn’t existed. The stories were more like fairytales, because he imagined if any vampire were to find such creatures, they would never tell another—for fear of having that endless fountain taken from them. Edward would never tell, but it wasn’t because of her rejuvenating blood.

 

Edward had said that he understood and tried to leave the conversation, but Esme had entered, hesitantly touching his arm. _‘Remember,’_ his mother had pleaded. _‘whatever she is, she had a bad night.’_

 

He stood in the gape of the cafeteria entrance, watching as it filled up with students, waiting to see her in that mess.

 

Hissing through his teeth, he realized that she wasn’t in the cafeteria, wasn’t even close. He was ready to turn and find her, when his sister came up beside him. Her small arm hooked with his, pulling him into the lunch room with her mate close beside. He sighed but gave in, walking to their usual table. Rose and Em had stayed home today, the family had thought it the best tactic for making peace with Bella. “She’s here. You have class with her later. You can wait,” Alice said as she sat.

 

Reluctantly he joined. “Did she attend your morning class?”

 

Alice nodded and set about pretending to eat. “She did.” Her lips tugged at the corners as if to frown. “Though she never looked at us and sat as far away as possible.”

 

“She was afraid,” Jasper consoled his mate and it sounded as though it were for the hundredth time.

 

So he waited through lunch and another two classes before finally reaching his last period. Even before he walked into the shabby art room, he knew she was there. He could hear her heart above all others, though it hummed quieter and calmer than any human. Still, he berated himself for not having noticed sooner that she wasn’t like the rest. As soon as he walked in, his eyes found her sitting near the window in front of an easel. Her hand stilled, charcoal between fingers and pressed to paper, but she didn’t look up. He didn’t like the way she tensed more and more the closer he got, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking the seat beside hers at the back of the room.

 

He said his polite ‘good afternoon’ and watched her reply uneasily, eyes never leaving her board.

 

The class began, the teacher lecturing before finally cutting them loose to do as they will. The class was already sparse and nearly emptied when the students were allowed to take their easels out where they wanted. He watched her begin to sketch again, but saw the nervousness in her hand, the way she couldn’t quiet lay the lines right and her mind never really focused on the paper. “I said I wasn’t going to hurt you and I meant it,” Edward spoke softly, just below the register where a human would hear him.

 

Was he testing her? Bella swallowed and lifted her chin. “You’re not the first of your kind to say so and lie.”

 

It was his turn to feel uneasy, his teeth clenched but he managed not to growl. He looked at a student that passed by them.

 

“You don’t like to draw,” Bella spoke this time and he was surprised. “Why did you take this class?”

 

“How do you know I don’t like to draw?”

 

She smiled just a little and it made his whole day of waiting worth it.

 

“Alright. I hate it.” Edward continued to watch her profile. “I took the class because I wanted to see more of you.”

 

Her smile dropped, charcoal catching on the page again. “You knew?”

 

He studied the dark smudges on her fingers left by the piece she held. “No.”

 

Bella turned to look at him. “Then why?”

 

Edward shrugged lightly but didn’t answer. After a moment of quiet his expression darkened, his eyes moving up to meet with hers. “Last night,” he started, “when Alice and Jasper found you on the street…” She cringed and looked away and it made him want to retract his words, but he continued. “They were human. You’re faster and stronger than most humans, aren’t you?”

 

She twisted the piece of charcoal in her fingers, staring blankly at the sketch in front of her. “Yes.”

 

His frown deepened, his jaw twitching. He had found them last night when he thought her dead. The ones that had raped her still smelt of her body, and they all reeked of her blood and alcohol. “Why didn’t you run?” He saw the truth of that night in her corpse and their memories, why wasn’t she more distraught? Why could he see her swallowing back emotions to pretend to sketch in class? Honestly, he had expected her not to show, to hide out in her house and make him struggle over the decision of how to talk to her, how to get closer

 

“I tried.” It was barely a whisper.

 

“They were too fast?”

 

“No.” She looked like she wanted to run, but kept her eyes on the large board of paper in front of her. “They knew who I was. If I ran that fast, if I was that strong…” He saw tears forming in her eyes but they never fell. “I don’t like being found out. Things can get…worse.”

 

“Worse than raped and beaten to death?” She cringed and he regretted his words, but there was something about the glazed look in her eyes when she spoke of it that made his chest hurt. It hit him hard. “This has happened before,” he breathed the truth and watched her hold her breath, as though it would hide it better. He didn’t want to push this subject anymore, not here, not like this. “What would they have said if they saw you tomorrow?”

 

Something dark and almost violent flashed behind her eyes, sweeping aside the pain, to twist her lips up at the corners. “It’s been my experience that men are relieved to find out they aren’t murderers.”

 

The teacher was walking back into the class, students steadily flowing back. “I guess.” Edward turned forward again, watching her from the edge of his vision. “But they died murderers.”

 

The charcoal broke against the paper, her heart slamming up into her throat. It dragged down with her hand, leaving a jagged black line. She was flushed when she turned to look at him. She wanted to think he was joking, but nothing about the stern profile of his face gave that impression. “Why would you do that?”

 

He was quiet for so long that she was sure he wouldn’t answer. “After what they did to you…” His jaw twitched, but his eyes didn’t meet hers. “They deserved it. They deserved worse.”

 

There were more students filling the seats around them and yet she couldn’t help but whisper in shock. “But your eyes…” She had known what that amber color meant, though she had only heard of it before she saw the Cullens. It was why she had stayed even when she saw them. They didn’t feed on humans. How would they ever find out about her? She had been naïve. But his eyes hadn’t turned red. Was he lying about killing those men? Trying to win her trust? He wouldn’t be the first to play with her like a mouse.

 

His lips curled, she saw it from the corner of her eyes, and he ducked his head to hide his snarl from the other students. “I don’t feed on humans anymore,” he whispered so lowly that no human would hear, knowing now that she still could. “And even if I did, I would not have taken any part of them into me.”

 

They sat quietly through the last five minutes of class before the final bell sounded and the students flooded out. She remained, slow with gathering her things and uncomfortable as he waited for her. He followed her from the class into the emptied hall, a step behind and to her right. He listened, wanting to hear something either from her mouth or her mind, but she gave nothing, her pace even and her heart pounding heavy with nerves.

 

Suddenly she stopped and he was surprised until he saw Alice and Jazz waiting up ahead in the hallway. She was trapped again; he didn’t need to read his brother’s thoughts to know that. “What do you want from me?” Bella asked, her voice low and defeated even when it wouldn’t abandon some sense of dignity. Again, he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought she was a seventeen-year-old human.

 

“Nothing,” he said, watching her.

 

_‘Liar,’_ her thoughts whispered. “Then pretend you don’t know. Nothing has changed.”

 

He hesitated. It was a fair request but he couldn’t imagine granting it. “I don’t want to,” Edward admitted.

 

She swallowed hard and sighed. “Why not?”

 

“I want to know you,” he replied just as softly. “Allow me to spend time with you… to be your friend,” he requested though even he knew that friendship was less than he desired but at the same time, he would gladly take it over pretending not to know her.

 

She laughed and it was short and alarmingly unhappy. “Friends?” Bella turned to look up at him in disbelief. “Our kind can’t be friends any more than you can be friends with a human. I’ve seen the way you and your family suffer through classes surrounded by them. Do you think my blood wouldn’t temp you the same way?”

 

“It doesn’t,” he protested and even though she was angry he felt grateful to hear her speak so much. “I wasn’t interested in you because of your blood.”

 

“Then why?” she demanded.

 

His lips pressed together because he could not answer, not after how he had seen her only the night before, broken and dead on his kitchen table. He couldn’t tell her how she had intrigued him, how he’d thought about her, about how he couldn’t have her because she was human. “I don’t know,” he lied.

 

She looked up the stretch of hall again only to realize that the other two vampires had vanished.

 

“May I drive you home?”

 

“No,” she answered automatically, nervously. It was unnerving, not knowing what they wanted. She had been caught by vampires before and they’d stolen decades from her, locking her away and draining her down almost every day. If the Cullen’s weren’t going to use her, then why were they so interested? Were they toying with her?

 

Edward was still beside her when she reached the outside of the school. She paused, clutching tightly to the strap of her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

He took it as a promise and watched her leave. She walked home. It took everything he had not to follow but once he’d gone home with his car he went out and found himself trailing through the woods. The next few weeks were like that. She was quiet and distant, he sat next to her, he offered her a ride home and every day she declined. Some days were more polite than others. And every night he ended up in the woods outside her home, content to know that she was there inside.

 

It seemed her adoptive father was a truck driver. Edward saw him leave the second day and he hadn’t been back. Some nights she didn’t sleep and when she did it wasn’t for long. She never seemed to eat at school and he hadn’t seen her go to the grocery store in those weeks.

 

It was raining outside and he couldn’t help but notice how much calmer she seemed, almost smiling when thunder rolled over the teachers attempts at a lecture. They were sketching fruit today. It was boring but he didn’t care. It seemed every day he found himself waiting for this class, for this chance at awkward bits of conversation.

 

Most of what he learned about her had been the rare words that slipped across her consciousness but some days, when she seemed more uneasy than others, he didn’t ask anything at all.

 

It was still raining out when class ended that day. He walked her to the entrance of the school. At some point it had become ‘walking with her’ rather than ‘near her’. “May I drive you home?” he asked every day, and every day she declined.

 

This time she didn’t seem anxious so much as she was disappointed. “No, thank you.” Her attention returned to the heavy rain and the thick clouds. Did she want to walk? Was that why she always said no? He opened the door for her and the sound of the weather was louder than even the students in their class had been. “May I walk you?”

 

Bella was only a few steps from the door when he asked, looking back at him curiously. There was her moment of hesitation, that worry that life had taught her. _‘Say yes,’_ he heard her think, urging herself and it took all his effort not to smile and sigh at that bit of encouragement. “What about your car?”

 

“I’ll get it tomorrow,” he said, leaving the door to swing shut as he walked her across the parking lot. Jasper and Alice were standing under an umbrella next to their car and though he only glanced at them for a moment he could see their smiles.

 

Bella didn’t take the roads, he already knew that. She walked right through the woods, a straight line to her house that took her over rocks and fallen trees. She was elegant. She had pulled up the hood on her sweater, letting it soak through as well as her hair. She seemed so much calmer out here, away from other people, beneath the dark clouds.

 

“Do you get sick?” Edward asked curiously.

 

She was standing on a mossy ledge when she paused, thinking about that. “Yeah… but not small illnesses.” She shrugged and started walking again. “I don’t know how it works. I died of tuberculosis once though.” He saw her mouth twitch after she said it and wondered if she hadn’t meant to give out that information. “I don’t suppose vampires ever get sick,” she muttered, trying to change the subject.

 

He smiled at the thought. “No.” Lightning flashed somewhere to the side and soon the thunder clapped again. He heard her appreciative sigh. “Do you live up here for the weather?”

 

Bella smiled a little. “I guess in part.”

 

“What’s the other reason?” he asked but she didn’t answer at first. “I would think you’d want to live somewhere… sunnier.”

 

Her fingers were curling around the strap of her bag again, something she did when she was uncomfortable.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

 

“I tried to live in sunnier places so that they wouldn’t find me.”

 

He clenched his teeth. ‘They’ had meant vampires, ones she’d learned to fear.

 

She smiled a little and kept walking. “But I get tired if I’m exposed to direct sunlight for too long.” She laughed, a small embarrassed sort of sound. “I tried to go through a desert in Nevada once.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t move during the days, it was so damn bright, all I could do was sit there. I was as red as a lobster by night fall.”

 

Edward smiled and came to walk beside her, they were coming up on her house now. “You sunburn?” He tried not to laugh.

 

She nodded, still smiling. “Stupid right? I mean, I healed over the night but by the next morning I was pale and ready to burn again.” She stopped near the porch and looked up at him. “Sparkling doesn’t seem so bad now, right?”

 

Edward lifted and dropped one shoulder in a shrug. “Somehow I think sunburns might have more dignity than sparkling.”

 

There was an awkward moment where she seemed to consider inviting him in and then decided against it. He took a step back. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

 

Bella nodded, relief washing through her as she stepped up onto her porch and he started toward the main road. Tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

She was standing in gym class, pretending to play basketball. She was almost a century old and yet here she was, wearing alarmingly short shorts and an ill-fitting t-shirt. She’d packed her bag more than a month ago and told herself to run, run from this town, from the Cullens, run from him. But her bag was still sitting there at home beside the couch, waiting for her to mean it.

 

Things were only getting stranger. Alice had started sitting next to her in her second period, bringing her uncomfortable boyfriend along. The deceptively frail looking vampire seemed to be making every effort to befriend her and Bella still couldn’t understand why. She wanted to believe it, wanted to have a friend in the world that knew something true about her, but that little voice in the back of her mind kept warning her. She had met vampires before. She had spent whole decades as a captive and then years underground just to lose them. Was she willing to risk another dozen years in that kind of pain?

 

She almost laughed. Why not? She’d spent so long hiding. It was lonely.

 

Her thoughts ended when she felt someone coming up behind her. Bella sighed but didn’t move when the girl, a particularly damaged teen, threw the basketball to slam it against the back of Bella’s head. She cringed because it was the thing to do and dropped her head forward with the force of the throw, a cheer of laughter jarring from the girls as they went back to their game. She was pushing her hair back out of her face and straightening when she realized that someone was standing next to her.

 

“Why did you let her do that?” Rosalie asked, wearing the same uniform and watching the girls that went on with their game. The blond hadn’t been at school much, or maybe she’d just been skipping gym since she shared it with Bella, either way they hadn’t spoken since the night they discovered her.

 

Bella shrugged, watching the blond rather than the other players. “She’s sixteen.”

 

“She’s a bully.”

 

She nodded. “Yeah, but she’s still a human and a child.”

 

Rosalie seemed to consider this before sneering and looking down at the shorter woman at her side. As it turned out, she was tall even without her heels. “Edward says you paint.”

 

Bella blinked. “I do,” she replied in the same monotone as the vampire.

 

“I need a room painted.”

 

“I don’t really do that sort of painting…”

 

“I want a mural.”

 

“Of what?”

 

Rosalie sighed as though suddenly bored and turned away. “We’ll discuss it more over lunch. I’ll be in the cafeteria.”

 

Bella opened her mouth to say something, anything, but the blond had already walked away. She spent the next class trying to decide what to do. She hadn’t used the cafeteria since she had arrived and realized that the school was inhabited by vampires, thinking that it was best to keep her distance. But now they knew, and for the past week one had been walking her home every day. Her class ended and the students rushed out to tackle the lunch lines. She was hesitant, nervous, though even she knew it was stupid. Still, walking to that crowded room of hungry students and making her way toward a table of vampires had put her on edge.

 

They looked up at her the moment she walked in. Rosalie looked away first, returning to a conversation she seemed to be having with Emmett. Edward stood when she started toward their table and Alice beamed, holding her boyfriend’s hand tightly. He still looked uncomfortable, maybe even more so than Bella did.

 

Edward moved his chair to offer it to her and Emmett reached out to snag another from a different table, replacing his brother’s seat.

 

She sat down, between Edward and Alice, and shifting her bag to have it in her lap.

 

“Do you want something to eat?” Edward asked as he sat back down beside her.

 

“No, thank you,” Bella found herself murmuring.

 

“Do you eat?” Emmett asked curiously, holding a bottle of juice and pretending to sip at it.

 

She looked up at the large vampire across the table. “Yes… sometimes.”

 

Alice clapped her hands. “Fabulous! Let’s have dinner!”

 

Edward glared at his sister then but the slight brunet didn’t seem to notice, her attention focused instead on Bella. “It’ll work out wonderfully! You can come over to take a look at Rosalie and Emmett’s room and then we can have dinner. I have this amazing cookbook—” Bella stopped listening at this point, though Alice continued to speak for several more sentences about recipes. A vampire, with a cookbook. The idea kept sticking in her thoughts. Why would a vampire have a cookbook?

 

“What do you say?” She heard the last words before her whole body jumped from her chair. At first not even she realized what had caused the reaction, her chair staggered back onto the floor and she somehow remained on two legs, still clutching her school bag. Alice had grabbed her hand. The brunet was staring up at her, everyone was staring up at her, but the brunet looked hurt, her eyes wide and her lips parted as though for once she had no words. Her hands were still lingering there where they had been when they reached out excitedly to take one of Bella’s.

 

She cringed when she watched those pale, perfect hands descend into Alice’s lap again, everyone struggling to find polite smiles at the table while the rest of the student body simply stared on. Edward had stood up, she hadn’t seen it or heard it and if she weren’t already humiliated she might have been unnerved.

 

“I’m sorry,” Alice manages to say before Bella can get out the same words. The brunet vampire smiled almost slyly, seeming to recover quickly. “So you’ll come over after class tomorrow, Friday? You can ride back with us.”

 

Bella shifted uncomfortably on her feet, all eyes still following her. She turned to pick up the chair she’d dropped only to realize that Edward already had. “Y-Yeah, sure,” she muttered before taking a step away from the table. “I’ve got to get going.”

 

Alice beamed. “See you later!” she chimed as the girl left. Edward lingered long enough to give his sister a sharp glare before exiting.

 

It wasn’t difficult to catch up with Bella, though she covered more ground than the average teen. She had left campus, crossed the parking lot and started toward the woods. He fought the urge to grab her arm. Fighting the impulse to touch her had become a daily issue. “You’re going home,” he said rather than asked.

 

She stopped, only noticing him when he spoke, and turned sharply. She seemed flushed but she smiled and he wished she hadn’t, because it was only a gesture of her discomfort. “No. I was just going to walk a bit. I have twenty minutes until my next class.”

 

He nodded. “You don’t have to come over tomorrow.” He watched the way her breath never quite made clouds even in the chilled air. The snow would come any day now and she still didn’t wear a jacket.

 

She turned away, looked at the trees, at the grey clouds between branches and sighed. “What do you really want from me?”

 

Her voice was so quiet that even he seemed to strain to hear, finding himself taking steps closer to where she stood among the tight green and stone. “I told you.”

 

“I don’t believe you.” She was a decimal louder then. “One of your sisters wants to make me dinner and the other wants me to paint her room.” She turned to look at him and Edward almost took a step back. She looked so sad, so angry and so torn all at once. “Your… _Esme,_ she ‘ran into me’ at the store last week. She asked how I was feeling.” She swallowed hard and he wondered if she would cry, if she could cry. “What do they want?”

 

“They want to meet you.”

 

“Why?”

 

His lips pressed and he didn’t answer though something in the depth of his eyes was trying to tell her.

 

“Am I pet?” Bella demanded with more than a little bitterness and fear in her voice.

 

His eyes widened for a fraction of a second. “No,” Edward said firmly.

 

“And I’m not food.” Her voice shook but she tried to say it with certainty, like she believed it.

 

“No,” he said almost before she finished the sentence, taking a cautious step closer.

 

She stared back at him, it was possibly the longest she’d ever held his gaze. He took another step closer and she didn’t back away. He was within arm’s reach now and though again the impulse to touch her coiled in his limbs he didn’t dare. “You know I’m not…” Bella swallowed hard, still staring back at him. “I’m not one of you. We’re not… I’m not ‘family’.”

 

“You could be,” he offered quietly.

 

Her heart almost broke under that idea, that dream. Family. “Stop it,” she hissed and tore herself away from his gaze. “You don’t mean that.” She started back toward the school but as quick as her steps were, his were faster. His hand caught her arm and her whole body lurched to a stop.

 

Edward bit back a hiss and let her go almost as quickly as he had touched her, feeling and seeing the way her every muscle tightened- either preparing to defend or take what was coming. “I mean it,” he said before she could start walking again. “We can be family. I’ll take care of you and you’ll take care of me.” He waited to the sound of her always subtle heart until she relaxed and looked over her shoulder at him, tempted.

 

“Take care of you?” She sounded skeptical.

 

He smiled gently. “Life can get… lonely, when it’s as long as ours. I’d like your friendship.” He saw her mind working in her eyes. “In a few years we’ll be moving to another city further up north to start again. You could come with us and start over, if you want to when the time comes.”

 

“And if I don’t?” she asked, her voice tight. She was testing him. “What if I don’t want to go with you then?”

 

He stared back at her. Did she think he would make her go with them? “Then you don’t have to. I’m just asking that you think about it.”

 

She was quiet for a moment longer before nodding and starting back toward the school.

 

Edward stood there, watching her go, surprised when she stopped at the edge of the trees before the parking lot and waited. She didn’t say anything out loud but he heard it drift over her thoughts. ‘Say something. Ask him if he’s coming.’ Her frustration and confusion were clear in the irritated tone with which she urged herself and he was glad her back was to him because he couldn’t help but smile.

 

He made sure to step on twigs on his way to join her, not sure just how good her senses were. She started walking again when he reached her, and together they crossed the parking lot. “Was your name always Bella?” He asked, hands in his jacket pockets and watching her casually.

 

She relaxed just the slightest bit for the offering of a subject change. “Yes.” _‘And no.’_ “It’s always been some form or another of it.”

 

He nodded. A part of him dreaded the day he’d have to tell her that he could hear some of her thoughts because he loved hearing them so much and he worried that she could hide them if she wanted. “You don’t have to come over tomorrow,” he repeated. “They’re really just trying to be welcoming, in their own ways, but they’ll understand if it’s too soon.”

 

He held the door to the front of the school and she walked in first. They stopped at a corner of hallway where their paths to class would separate. He would have gladly walked her to hers but he didn’t want to risk pushing. She looked down the hallway, squeezing the strap of her bag. “I’ll think about it,” she offered and he wondered if she was going to think about coming over or his offer to join them. He imagined it would be both.

 

His second to last class seemed impossibly long, strange that forty minutes could feel like an eternity after living so long. A part of him was always afraid she wouldn’t be there, in their art class, at the end of the day. He took the seat next to her. It had become his seat even though they didn’t have assigned sports because over the last few weeks he had returned to it again and again. They teacher was giving a lecture today with a slideshow to accompany it. He was cursing the woman with his eyes because she was keeping him from those rare answers and bits of conversation he managed to drag from her during this period. But then he heard it, in the classroom full of hushed students thinking, beneath the hum of the teacher’s voice.

 

 _‘It’s too elaborate to be a trick. Isn’t it?’_ She was thinking just loud enough for him to hear it if he ignored all the others. _‘They don’t have to trick me. They could have just kept me.’_

 

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. Her face was glowing in the light cast back from the projector and her fingertips rolled across the pad of her thumb thoughtfully. Her brow was pinched. When he closed his eyes, sitting so close to her, he saw the stream of images drifting over her thoughts. They weren’t exactly memories, but daydreams from memories. Images of his home, taken from her brief time there, and his family and him. She was imagining them as her family. She was imagining him as her—

 

The images changed as quickly as they started. The hue was different. No longer dreamy and hopeful. It was no longer imaginary. It had the flavor of a memory, strong and real. It was someplace dark. No windows and he could feel just how tired she was. He could feel everything she felt, as though he was the one sitting in that room, in someone’s lap. Her arms were in front of her, her hands broken and fingers curled in to palms with metal bent around them to keep them there. Arms wrapped around her from behind and Edward felt them as though they held him, pulling his back into that solid chest so that he could feel the rumble of a growl deep inside. He felt her misery. Her fear. Her hopelessness. A hand grabbed their face and turned it so that teeth could graze their neck. Theirs, because that’s what it felt like just then, hers and his all at once. _“Forever,”_ the voice whispers. A promise turned curse, whispered against their neck before teeth sunk in.

 

Edward bolted upright from his seat, eyes bursting open. His chair flew back and his teeth mashed to swallow back a growl. The memory was gone and he was standing in that dim classroom with all the eyes of giggling students and one pissed teacher on him.

 

“Mr. Cullen,” the woman wielding the projector said his name in surprise. “Is there something about Cubism that offends you?”

 

There was, but that wasn’t why he’d disturbed her lecture.

 

He looked down at Bella and she was staring up at him, her eyes large and her body pressed into the back of her chair. He could hear the fine sounds of the metal and wood threatening to break if she pushed any harder against it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, the teacher took it as an apology for interrupting her but he was still looking at Bella. He felt a wave of guilt for peeking in her thoughts then, because what he’d seen and felt hadn’t been his to know before she told. He sat back down but she didn’t relax again beside him. As soon as the bell rang she was out of her seat and out the door. Today he didn’t follow. Today he sat in his chair and waited for the class to empty out before grabbing his bag and leaving.

 

She was gone when he got to the parking lot. Alice and Jasper were standing beside her car. Alice was looking worried and he could hear the questions in her thoughts long before he reached them. _‘Why did you walk her home?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Jasper said she was upset.’_

 

She opened her mouth to let the flood loose but he shook his head to cut her off. “You keep an eye on her future, right?” He hadn’t asked about it since Bella came back to life on their kitchen table, but his sister had been watching over the girl before that.

 

“Of course.” Alice sounded almost offended. Jasper smiled a little, the faintest gesture in the corner of his mouth.

 

“Tell me if I need to know something,” Edward said, looking out into the forest in the direction she had gone. “I don’t want to know unless…” He bit the inside of his lip, not sure what exactly he was asking. He knew it wasn’t to hear the details of Bella’s future, whether with him or not. He wanted to experience this. He wanted to get to know her. But he still felt those teeth on his neck and heard that voice whispering to her. Was he dead? The vampire that had held her captive? And why were her hands bound like that?

 

“If something bad happens,” she whispered, looking truly worried now.

 

“Yes,” Edward confirmed, tearing his eyes from the forest to look at his sister. “And I don’t mean, if she’s not coming to dinner.”

 

Alice smiled widely. “She is.”

 

Edward frowned. “I told you I don’t want to know.”

 

“She doesn’t know either,” Jasper assured, opening the driver’s door for his wife. “Just hopeful.”

 

“We’re going grocery shopping!” Alice was more than ready to ignore their skepticism. “Do you want to join?”

 

Edward sighed and shook his head. “She might not come over and we don’t even know what she eats.”

 

Alice made a dismissive sound and got into the car. Jasper was in route to walk around the hood but stopped beside Edward for a second longer, looking out into the trees. “You were afraid,” he whispered, their shoulders touching in passing. There was a question in that statement. He was asking Edward if something had happened. He was asking if something needed to be done about whatever had made his brother-in-law feel that spike of fear.

 

Edward smiled a little and patted Jasper’s shoulder before leaving to walk into the woods. “Everything’s okay,” he assured before following her trail through the trees. He tried to imagine feeling alone, while walking through the forest in her footsteps. He had felt lonely many times in his life but never alone, never the way he had felt it in her memories. He always had family if he needed them—sometimes even when he tried to reject them.

 

It didn’t take him long to reach the edge of trees that looked across a short field to her driveway. Her house was quiet but he could hear her moving around inside. Her adoptive father was still away and for the first time, Edward hesitated to leave. He wanted to ask her a hundred questions just about that one memory. Who was he? Was he dead? Oh, how he hoped that vampire was dead. But if he was going to ask her those questions, he’d have to tell her how he knew.

 

The lace curtain in the window pulled to the side and Bella looked back at him across that stretch of grass and mud. He would have to tell her soon, he realized. Before it became a secret—of worse, a lie.

 

He dropped his head and then turned away, cutting through the forest and picking up impossible speed. He would have to tell her, but not today.


	4. Chapter 4

Bella was tapping the eraser of her pencil against her notebook and barely even pretending to listen to the teacher at the head of the class. It was Friday. Two periods in to the day, two more away from lunch, three from her art class, Edward, and the end of the school day. She still hadn’t decided what she was going to do about painting a stupid wall in a particularly unpleasant vampire’s room. Edward had freaked out in their art class yesterday. Freaked. Out. And like a damn coward, she’d ran off rather than asked what his problem was.

 

She still didn’t know but felt the very sulky feeling that it was her own fault now. She should have just asked. She should have waited for him after class, like usual. She dropped her pencil and resisted the urge to thud her forehead down on the desk. She should make a run for it. Get on a bus and a plane and a train and find a new town. But she hadn’t done that either. She was sitting in an English class pretending to take the same notes she’d taken at least a dozen times before. Worst of all, Alice was sitting four rows ahead of her and already Bella was sure she wasn’t going to get out of this class without some sort of interaction. The small vampire looked absolutely ecstatic and, from where she sat, Bella could see that Alice was drawing cakes on her notebook. Not doodles, but elaborately decorated cakes that would have shamed the best of bakers.

 

Bella took a breath and decided, right then and there, that she would be less of a coward today and at least give this a try. She’d never had a family before and she wasn’t saying she’d sign up to join this one, but she could at least go over for dinner and consider her options. Living with vampires might be a good deterrent to other vampires, anyway and her chances of bumping into another group that hunted in the woods rather than the streets wasn’t likely. Alright, it was decided then. She would go over to the Cullen’s house after school.

 

Alice squealed. Actually, squealed, with hands balled and heels tapping excitedly on the floor. The whole class leaned away from her, except for Jasper, and looked at her in surprise. Even the teacher. She immediately apologized and waved off the old man’s worried attention. She twisted around in her desk and smiled at Bella and Bella could only gape back at her in confusion.

 

As soon as class was over, the small brunet bounced over to her, avoiding the flood of students making their way to the exit. Bella, decidedly not a coward today, did not flee like she oh so wanted to. She casually packed up her things.

 

“Do you have any food allergies?” Alice asked, holding her notebook and a bright pen.

 

Bella stood up from her desk, glancing at the other woman’s notebook to see that it was, indeed, the one with the cake drawings. “No,” Bella answered, looking over Alice’s shoulder at Jasper. He wasn’t standing quite as close to his girlfriend as usual, a couple of steps back, and Bella wondered if it was because of how close Alice was standing to her.

 

“Are you a vegetarian?” Alice asked, scribbling in pen over the very nice drawing.

 

“No.” Bella took a step to the side to start walking toward the door, but kept an even pace so that she wouldn’t be exactly running away. She also didn’t take her eyes off of them when they followed.

 

Alice never looked up from her notebook but still managed to maneuver around desks and students. “What are your feelings about risotto?”

 

Bella almost smiled, almost. “Um. Good?”

 

Alice wiggled with excitement and wrote something else down. “Favorite fruit?”

 

They were in the hall now. “Lime.”

 

Alice nodded like this was a good choice and Jasper tried not to smile. “Favorite color?”

 

“Are we still talking about food?” Bella asked, they were walking side by side now down the hall and other students were looking. It was an oddity for sure, but the adolescent humans had no idea how truly odd it was.

 

Alice looked up. “What? Oh. No.”

 

Bella raised an eyebrow but Alice was still waiting. “Green,” she decided right then. No one had ever asked before so she’d never really had to decide. She regretted it almost instantly but what was done was done. Alice had written down two sentences that Bella could only imagine had something to do with green.

 

Jasper tugged on the brunet’s shoulder gently to direct her to another hall while Bella was heading to her own class. “Oh.” Alice looked disappointed for only a second before cheering up. “See you after school!” she shouted down the hall that had stretched between them. There were more stares and whispers to follow.

 

Her day went back to normal after that. She spent lunch on her own and told herself it wasn’t her being a wuss because it was how she always spent her lunch. When she got to her last class, he was already there. Sitting at an easel. Usually he came into class after her and took the seat next to her. Usually she didn’t have to make the choice to sit next to him.

 

Bella picked up her things from her art cubby and walked through the slowly filling room of students. She sat next to him and set up her large paper and charcoal nubs.

 

“Alice thinks you’re coming over today,” Edward spoke first, voice tempered as always.

 

Bella almost backed out right then. “Do you mind?”

 

He looked at her for a second and her cheeks felt hot for it. “Of course not.”

 

She nodded and for the next sixteen minutes they didn’t say anything. That time was filled with the teacher giving her start of class ramble before letting them loose to work on their individual projects. “You growled yesterday,” she said quietly, as though it was normal conversation. She wanted it to be a normal conversation. She wanted it to be anything other than terrifying.

 

Edward nodded slowly. “I apologize.”

 

“You were angry?” She kept her voice quiet, careful. Did he have a temper? Didn’t they all?

 

“Yes,” he confessed. “But it wasn’t with you.” He watched her carefully, trying to decide if she believed him.

 

“Why were you angry?” Asking all of these question was starting to make her feel uncomfortable. How could asking questions be more exposing than answering them?

 

“Can I tell you later?”

 

Bella looked at him, alarmed and wondering if it was a trap. She relaxed again when she felt stupid for thinking it. He didn’t have to trap her. She was easy prey. “Forget it,” she decided instead.

 

“Bella,” he said her name and her whole body tensed. It was the first time he’d said it. It sounded different in his mouth than it had sounded ever before. It sounded familiar.

 

She swallowed and put down her charcoal. “Would you mind giving me a ride today?” she asked before he could try to explain or apologize again. He looked surprised when she looked back at him and a part of her scrambled for more words. “Since I’m going to your family’s house today… If you don’t mind—”

 

He smiled and she thought her heart would stop. “Of course.”

 

* * *

 

In other parts of the quiet town on the verge of winter, a morbid crime scene was being viewed by uncomfortable sheriffs. A heap of bodies had been found in the woods not far from town. Five bodies, all recently killed by what they could only imagine to be animals. Animals was the go to culprit in Forks because anything else would have been too terrifying. The bodies were photographed before being moved into bags and taken to the morgue.

 

* * *

 

 

She was in his car.

 

He was still a little shocked she was actually coming over to their house. She hadn’t been there since that night she died. She hadn’t been in his car since he drove her home after she came back to life.

 

“Any advice?” Bella asked and he looked at her quickly. She looked uncomfortable, squeezing the seatbelt like she usually did the strap of her bag.

 

“What?” Edward asked, feeling like he’d woken up halfway through a conversation. He knew it wasn’t possible. Not because he didn’t sleep, but because he couldn’t imagine missing any part of any conversation with her.

 

“Is there some vampire house edict I should know about?” Bella clarified, feeling more than a little out of place and embarrassed. She was trying to make friends. Not just make friends, but make friends with vampires. A part of her brain was still screaming for her to run.

 

Edward smiled a little and looked at the long stretch of road ahead of them again. “Not that I can think of. Don’t throw any crosses or garlic around,” he said it and, if he could hold his breath, he would have.

 

She laughed. It was short and restrained but beautiful. There was another small stretch of silence and he shifted through choices of questions to start a conversation, but before he could she had spoken first. “So. How did you find them? Your family,” she clarified, voice small and eyes studying the road ahead like she’d never seen trees and asphalt before.

 

“I was actually one of the first, I guess,” he started and then went into an explanation of meeting Carlisle and dying and coming to be and then a vaguer explanation of how the others had joined them over time.

 

She asked questions about them, about him, and a little about his life before his death. He meant to ask her the same questions but there was such an easiness with their conversation then that he didn’t dare break it. Even when they reached the house and he came around to open her door, she was still calm, still curious. She only hesitated when they started toward the house and Alice threw open the front door wearing an apron.

 

Her steps slowed a stride and he looked at her, worried she would turn back for the car. But instead she was leaning just slightly toward him and he took it as an invitation to lean a little toward her in return. She looked up at him, and he thought for certain it was the best moment of his life.

 

“What are the chances of Rosalie throwing me through another glass door?” Bella said quietly, a whisper too quiet for humans and maybe, just maybe, too quiet for Alice at this distance. Her eyes widened a little when she realized how close they were but to her own surprise she didn’t pull away, not just yet.

 

His mouth pulled into a grin accompanied by a playful cringe. “70/30.”

 

She took the opportunity to laugh and straighten, putting just a little more space between them. “In my favor or hers?”

 

“Always in hers,” Alice answered from the porch, looking as patient as she could possibly muster. “But I’m sure Edward will catch you this time.” She swayed a little, smiling devilishly.

 

Bella flushed at the thought, a mix of fear and… was that excitement? She spared one more glance up at Edward before walking past him and into the house to follow Alice. In all her long life, she would never have imagined that she would go willingly into a vampire’s home.

 

Rosalie was standing at the top of the stairs with a stiff frown that somehow didn’t disturb her general prettiness. Her arms were folded and her head cocked back to the side. “Took long enough,” she muttered before turning and starting up the next turn of stairs. “This way.”

 

“Rose!” Alice complained, clicking her teeth before rolling her eyes and going back to the kitchen.

 

Edward watched the whole display with a mild sense of alarm. Were they coming on too strong? Too childish? He had to admit, they were alarmingly childish considering their ages.

 

Bella hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looking up uneasily. He was almost certain she wouldn’t go, or that she’d turn back to him for some sort of excuse not to but then she was halfway up-fast and quiet. He followed her all the way to the hall, watching the delicate slouch of her shoulders. She looked defeated. Or maybe resigned. It might have been adorable if it wasn’t so heartbreaking.

 

Rosalie’s bedroom door was open at her and Emmett’s end of the hall and her long, narrow figure stood there, already assessing the chosen wall. He wasn’t sure why or when she had decided it needed to be painted or why she needed Bella to do it. He was afraid to ask because he suspected it was her way of being helpful.

 

“That one,” she pointed when Bella stood in the doorway. The furniture had all been moved and piled onto the other side of the room and a plastic tarp was laid out on the floor. Bella tried to back up at the sight of it and pushed right into his chest. He froze, surprised by how quickly she’d moved and the contact. Memories of being wrapped in tarps, waking stuck and sticky with blood, flashed through his mind at that contact and he cringed.

 

Rosalie noticed and moved deeper into the room to allow Bella more space to enter while disguising the gesture as her own interest in the wall. “I want it bright but not ridiculously so,” she said in that ever imperial tone.

 

Bella moved forward, propelled away from Edward, alarmed that she’d run into him at all. Her back felt warm where it had touched his chest, that contact still making her skin tingle in a way it never had before. “Um… Okay.” She sounded skeptical.

 

Rosalie reached into the back pocket of her jeans and tugged out a few photos. Her arm stretched to the side carelessly to offer them up. “This.”

 

Bella wrinkled her nose at the offering, not sure she wanted to take that last step to reach the blond but not quite willing to risk the penalty of leaving Rosalie hanging either. She took the step and snatched the pictures.

 

Rosalie blinked, looking at her then and then at Edward. “How fast is she exactly?”

 

Edward shrugged, deciding not to assure the blond that she wasn’t as fast as any of them.

 

Bella looked at the pictures. Stacks of houses in bright, mismatching colors along a rocky coastline with brilliantly blue oceans and waves crashing into dark cliff edges. She shuffled through them. One was a polaroid, faded. One black and white and another brilliantly details and glossy. “Italian Riviera?” Bella tried to sound unimpressed.

 

Rosalie tried to look unimpressed, turning her eye to the wall. “Yeah. Put it there.” She waved her hand at the chosen canvas.

 

Bella nodded slowly. “Alright. Sure. I’ll do some sketching today and then get supplies over the weekend,” she said, not sounding overly committed.

 

“Emmett and Jasper are picking up supplies. Sketch the wall now and paint when they get back.” She instructed.

 

Edward groaned and glared at his sister. “She’ll do it later.”

 

Rosalie turned toward them, shooting Edward a warning lip curl before looking at Bella again. “You can’t do it now?”

 

“It would take a couple days at least,” she explained.

 

“So? It’s Friday. You have the whole weekend.”

 

Bella pushed some of her brown hair behind one ear, tugging a little at the length while her mind raced to find an excuse not to. “It’s kind of a long walk from my place to yours,” she fished.

 

Rosalie’s perfect nose scrunched only slightly. “Why would you go home?”

 

Bella tensed and Edward took a step closer, staring past her shoulder to the blonde. What was she thinking? Why would she push this?

 

“Alice has made enough food to feed a dozen humans,” Rosalie continued, unrelenting. “You don’t eat at school so you can’t need that much food.”

 

Bella swallowed, struggling to breathe. She was supposed to stay in a house with vampires for a whole weekend? Why? What did she want? Her imagination started to get away from her. “You want me to… sleep over?”

 

Somewhere distant in the house, likely the kitchen, Edward picked up the high pitched sounds of Alice’s elation. “Rosalie, stop it,” he warned.

 

“Do you sleep?” Rosalie continued, still staring down at the shorter woman.

 

“If I want to,” Bella replied, an edge to her voice making it just possibly a jab.

 

Rosalie’s eyes flared as though she’d caught it. “Well then, it won’t be a ‘sleep over’ unless you decide to sleep, will it?”

 

“You’re awfully impatient for an immortal aren’t you?”

 

Rosalie lifted and dropped her shoulder in a shrug. “I want what I want. Paint the wall. We’ll feed you.” She said it all very decisively, as though it was obviously the only choice.

 

Bella turned when the blond walked past her and Edward to leave the room. _‘As long as I’m not feeding you,’_ she thought but didn’t quite get the nerve up to say.

 

Edward heard it and wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. He smiled apologetically and then promised to be back soon before following Rosalie downstairs. They took the stairs and most of the house in a second, reaching the kitchen before he grabbed her elbow and pulled her to a stop, turning her around to face him. “What are you doing?” Edward growled lowly, just in case Bella could still hear.

 

Alice stood on the other side of the kitchen island, holding a bag of lavender frosting and wearing a huge grin. All her heard in her thoughts was ‘sleep over’, over and over again as she tried to focus on the argument at hand.

 

“What?” Rosalie pretended only somewhat to be confused.

 

“What do you mean what? Why would you—” She didn’t say anything to cut him off, but she thought things. Her expression never changed—it didn’t have to. She knew he would hear her thoughts, hear her good intentions to make peace in her own ways and more importantly, hear the memory of her conversation with Carlisle on the phone before he and Bella got home. He would hear all about the recent murders and their adoptive father’s certainty that there was another vampire in the area. At least one.

 

He swallowed hard and then nodded, letting go of his anger at her bold behavior. As usual, how sharp tongue and blunt actions came from a good place. She had decided, in very Rosalie fashion, that the new girl would be better off staying at their place but had no intention of asking politely or showing that she cared at all.

 

Alice sucked her lower lip into her mouth, her way of stopping herself from spilling the words that wanted to come out so badly. She had seen something. She was excited. Edward pretended to be annoyed with them both and went back upstairs. He leaned against the doorframe of Rosalie and Emmett’s room and watched Bella start sketching with pencil the shape of a coastline and the boxy outlines of houses on the wall.

 

He didn’t move from that spot for the next hour. He wasn’t sure when she noticed him but at some point she’d started talking. Asking more casual questions to fill the spaces between them. His favorite year. His favorite home. His favorite book. Each question led them into rounds of conversation. She looked back at him every so often when he said something too outrageous to be true or something that made her laugh.

 

He asked her the same questions in return. Easy ‘get to know you’ topics. Always their favorites and bests and never their worst.

 

Her picture was taking shape on the wall but Edward was only interested in it because it came from her hand. He watched the pencil sit still for a second, hesitation, before it moved again. “Do you want to eat me?” she asked quietly and didn’t turn to look back at him.

 

He stood away from the doorframe, watching carefully the way her shoulders tensed. “No,” he answered, despair welling in his chest because that one word seemed so little compared to what she was asking. He was a killer, a hunter, a murderer and she was asking if he wanted her for prey.

 

Her shoulders slowly relaxed and she drew a boat in the ocean. “You’re an odd creature.”

 

He wasn’t smiling but he tried to sound light. “You’re one to talk.” He felt her calm return, as though that simple no had been all she needed. “I need to tell you something.”


	5. Chapter 5

“I need to tell you something.”

 

The worn tip of her pencil broke against the wall. Bella stared at it if only to prolong the time between his grim words and whatever would follow. She had known there was something. Something off. Something he was holding back. But he’d been telling the truth so far. He wasn’t planning to make a meal or a pet of her.

 

She swallowed hard, a knot building in her chest. What if she’d been asking the wrong questions? What if he didn’t plan to eat her but was distracting her until someone else came? She broke the pencil and then dropped it, turning to face him.

 

She wanted to urge him on but couldn’t gather the words. Maybe because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She hadn’t meant to like him. She’d told herself not to but he hadn’t made disliking him very easy over the quiet months since she woke in this house.

 

Edward took a step closer. Bella didn’t step back but she tensed, so he stopped. “I have a gift.” He explained. He hated that word for it but he wanted to get this confession over with as smoothly as possible. She looked more confused and he was instantly grateful not to have heard whatever she imagined he was about to say before he spoke.

 

“A gift?” Bella sounded skeptical.

 

He nodded. “Alice can see the future.” Giving up other people’s secrets was easier than giving up his own but he told himself it would make it easier to understand. Honestly, he was just hoping it would make it easier to forgive. “Jasper has a sense for other people’s emotions.” He was decidedly vague about Jasper. She was standing tighter already, like bracing for a punch.

 

 _‘Powers,’_ she thought.

 

“Yes,” he confirmed. “I can hear thoughts.”

 

She looked unfazed for half a second before sucking a breath and taking a step back when what that entailed struck her.

 

“And sometimes I can see what people are thinking.”

 

She took another step back. “You’ve been reading my mind?” she barely whispered.

 

“Not intentionally,” Edward said quickly. “And not always. You’re… different.”

 

Her brow pinched. _‘What? What does that mean? How much does he know?’_ He could hear the panic in her thoughts.

 

“I can’t always hear you. I don’t know why. Maybe it has to do with focus, mine or yours, or nearness, or how loud your thoughts are,” he speculated, shaking his head when the ideas began to trail.

 

“Loud?” Bella sounded like she might take offense.

 

“Maybe.”

 

She nodded slowly but wouldn’t quite look at him, still considering what this meant.

 

It was coming, he knew it, but that was why he had to tell her.

 

“What do you know?” It was a whisper, on the verge of horrified.

 

He wanted to lie and tell her nothing. “When we walked into this room, and you saw the tarps, you remembered waking up, bloody, wrapped in plastic.” He watched her through his lashes, almost afraid to look at her directly now that she looked so uncomfortable and vulnerable. It was unfair, he understood that, to have someone know things you didn’t tell them, but it was also why he needed to tell her that he could before too many of her secrets were exposed.

 

She cringed, lips pressing tight and jaw pulling away to look at the wall blindly. “You see my thoughts,” she whispered.

 

“Only sometimes. Rarely,” he promised, trying to sooth. He wanted desperately to move closer to her, to touch her, but he didn’t dare. “You don’t have to tell me what it was if you don’t want to, but it didn’t feel fair to see without you knowing.”

 

She nodded uncomfortably and they stood in the silence of her thoughts, thoughts he could see on her face but couldn’t hear, until she spoke. “What else?”

 

He hesitated then but this was no time to start lying. “Yesterday in class you were daydreaming.”

 

She looked confused for a second before her head turned to look at him in surprise, flushing in embarrassment.

 

He wished that was all he had to tell her, because embarrassed was so much more preferable to frightened or sad. “And then you remembered something.”

 

She blinked at him, not sure what he was talking about.

 

“Forever,” he said the word and watched her change right before his eyes.

 

Her eyes widened and her lips pulled back from her teeth. She took that last step and her back hit the wall. “No.” She shook her head, tears gathering in those bright eyes.

 

He took a step closer, reaching out toward her in a desperate attempt to take back the pain he’d caused. She shook her head harder and he stilled, caught there in the middle of the room, unable to move away from her but unwilling to move any closer and cause those tears to spill over her lashes. “Bella.” His arm was still outstretched, fingers touching air between them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

 

“You saw him?” She squeezed out the words, terror in her eyes.

 

He shook his head, swallowing back every impulse to snarl. “No. No. I was—You were—sitting with your back to his chest.” He ground out the words, struggling not to sound affected by them, desperate not to add to her fear now. “He said that and then bit you.”

 

She stared at him, slowly calming. Slowly. And he waited there, watching the seconds it took for her to believe him. She did believe him and it left him awestruck.

 

“That’s all you saw?” Her voice was so quiet that he feared it might break. “Y-You didn’t see anything else?”

 

He shook his head again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to see it.”

 

She was still for another long minute before nodding finally and looking around the room as though realizing for the first time that she was still there. “Thank you for telling me,” she mumbled eventually and stepped away from the wall, a step closer to him. “Was-Was that why you got angry in class?”

 

His jaw clenched and he nodded. “Again, I apologize. It was just… unexpected.”

 

Bella nodded absently. “Why did you tell me?” she finally asked, sounding confused.

 

He took a step to the side in case she wanted the door, realizing that he was blocking it. “I meant what I said when I told you I wanted to know you, to be friends. I didn’t want you to think I was lying or tricking you.” He considered not continuing, seeing the way she relaxed at those words. “And I wanted to ask you some things, about what I saw, and I couldn’t do that without explaining,” he confessed.

 

She flinched, actually flinched. She looked around, and at the door, and at the pencil marks on the wall of Rosalie and Emmett’s room. She was considering her options, he realized.

 

“We don’t have to talk about it right now. I could take you home if you wanted.” He regretted it the moment he said it, remembering the reason Rosalie had bullied her into staying. But he wouldn’t take it back either. He needed Bella to feel safe with them—to know that she could come and go as she pleased. Of course, if he had to take her home he wouldn’t leave earshot of her house.

 

She shook her head slowly and took a deep breath. “No. Alice made dinner, right?” She forced a smile and then bit her lip before nodding again, agreeing with whatever decision she’d made. “Could we walk around for a bit though? Maybe you can give me a tour or something while we talk?” She didn’t look at him, resigning herself to whatever awful conversation lay ahead. He had been honest with her, as far as she could tell, and he was offering her a lot while asking only the answers to some questions. At least, that was all he was asking so far. A part of her tried to be skeptical and doubt him, but her heart had trouble believing it.

 

Edward nodded, relieved, and held the door. She walked past him and into the long hallway. “Ask,” she invited grimly, distracting herself with the odd artwork on the walls in hopes that it would make it easier to answer if she pretended not to pay attention.

 

He followed her, watching her carefully. She drifted down the long hallway and it did not escape his notice that she was wondering in the direction of his bedroom. “Is he dead?” Edward asked the question that mattered most to him—the one he needed the answer to. Most everything else was a matter of curiosity and concern.

 

He knew the answer before she gave it. She’d stopped breathing, stopped walking, for a second and then licked her lips and continued down the hall. He followed slowly. “Probably.”

 

He was glad she wasn’t looking at him then, so she didn’t see the anger that rippled across his features. “You got away or he let you go?” He remembered the memory of waking in a tarp. Someone had thrown her body away once not knowing what she was. He hoped, despite all certainty otherwise, that this monster had been that fool.

 

She craned her neck to look inside a room with a door left open. Alice and Jasper’s. She didn’t go inside. Didn’t even lean in. She just considered the furniture and objects, eagerly trying to distract herself. “I got away.” She took a breath and then let it out slowly. “It was by chance. He traveled sometimes and would hide me places. Someone happened to break into that particular building, intending to rob it, but found me.” Her voice sounded distant, even to her, but she was grateful for that distance. Those memories always felt like nightmares. Too awful to be real.

 

“How long ago?” Edward kept his voice low, following her but leaving more than an arm’s length between them.

 

“Since I left?” She came to the end of the hall and the open door there. The room was well lit and she might have given the wall sized window and forest view her awe if she didn’t find herself staring at a beautiful, glossy piano. She stood on the threshold, looking in to the room like it was an exhibit off limits. “Twelve years.”

 

She considered the books, the tidiness of the room, the absence of a bed. Her hand came up to touch the frame of the door and she leaned in further, breathing deep. It was his room. She looked back over her shoulder at him, surprised by the distance he’d left between them. “May I?” she asked, nudging her head in to the room.

 

Edward nodded, made hopeful by her calm.

 

“I didn’t know you played,” she admitted, smiling just a little. There was a strange relief to answering those simple questions. Or perhaps it was just relief that he hadn’t asked any of the truly horrible ones.

 

Edward followed her in, smiling a little. She went straight for the piano, standing closer and looking down at it, but making no move to touch it. “I could teach you,” he offered. The idea of her fingers on the keys of his piano was enough to make him shift closer.

 

She twisted around to look back at him in surprise before smiling anxiously and shaking her head. “No. I mean, that’s really nice, but I couldn’t.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“There’s something too pretty about a piano, you know? Like snow before anyone tramples it.” She blushed a little in embarrassment when she heard her own words. She turned fully, standing between him and his piano. “Any other questions today?” Her mouth trembled a little when she invited more pain.

 

He wanted to ask about her hands in that memory, broken and wrapped in bent metal, but it wasn’t something he needed to know. “No. Thank you.”

 

“I should probably confess too, then.” She sounded brave but swallowed hard. “I have a gift too.” She looked up at him then, into those amber eyes. She’d never told anyone that before. _‘Don’t say it. He’ll use it against you.’_ The logic of her brain tried to combat the choices of her heart. “If I focus, I know when people are lying. I can feel it.”

 

Edward stared at her, considering the long lists of questions she’d been asking him since she first started really talking to him. For a second he panicked, afraid he might have lied, but they were such benign topics he hadn’t even considered lying. And then he remembered when she asked if he wanted to eat her and how easily she’d accepted his answer. He smiled slowly. “Then, is there anything else you want to ask me today?”

 

She stared back at him. “What do you want from me?”

 

His smile threatened to fade. She’d asked that question before, weeks ago. “I want to know you. I want to be your friend,” he said again.

 

She waited the beat of her heart before her mouth pulled into the smallest of frowns. “You mean it when you say you want to know me, but wanting to be my friend isn’t entirely honest.” She looked stricken and unsure. She would have taken a step back from him if it wouldn’t put her into the side of the piano.

 

He stood still, staring back at her. He’d softened the truth because he’d been afraid of scaring her. He’d been so careful in his choice of words these past weeks but she was looking for honesty, blunt and real, and he couldn’t resist giving her anything she wanted. “I want to be everything to you,” he said it before he’d even really thought it, before he’d ever really embraced the scope of it. But it was true and he say it reflected in her surprise. He meant it. Every moment away from her was torture and every moment with her was counted among the most exhilarating of his life.

 

She held her breath. Staring back at him, the wave of that truth pushing her to lean closer to him, stricken by the depth of it. _‘He doesn’t mean it. He can’t.’_ Even the skeptical part of her brain was whispering now, mesmerized.

 

“I do.” He whispered back, aloud. “You know I do.”


	6. Chapter 6

She was caught in that space between Edward and his piano. What was he saying? What did that mean? Everything. He wanted to be everything to her. Her mind raced and her pulse jumped ever so slightly. He looked surprised, either by her reaction or by his words, and took a step back. For the first time in all her life, she wished he’d moved closer instead of away and it was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.

 

He wasn’t the first to say something romantic to her, but he was the first to mean it. She took a step closer and he stilled. For one strange moment, she felt like the predator stalking him and it was enough of a shock to almost have her jerking back from him. He knew what she was, what that should have made her to him. But that wasn’t what he was after. He meant it when he said he didn’t plan to hurt her. ‘Everything?’ She rolled it in her thoughts, he couldn’t mean that.

 

“Everything,” Edward said again. “Anything.” He amended out of desperation, afraid she would panic and run at any moment and he wouldn’t have the heart to chase her if she told him not to. “I want to be with you. I need to be with you.” It felt like he was exposing some vital part of himself he’d never laid bare before and set his nerves on fire. It had become his driving force, the need to see her, to feel close to her.

 

“I can’t…” She choked, swallowed, tried again. “I’ve never… not willingly. I won’t.” Bella shook her head once, staring back at him as she grabbed for words. His beautiful amber eyes widened a fraction and her heart hurt the moment he understood. She’d never touched anyone out of affection before and she’d never wanted any of the contact she’d known over her lifetime. She wasn’t sure she could ever give that and she couldn’t bear the idea of leading him on. When did that happen? When did his pain become her pain?

 

He nodded once. He had suspected, and never expected. “I’ll never ask it or take it,” he swore and she exhaled with such relief that she nearly lost her balance, because he meant it. “I want a companion,” Edward continued. “A friend. And I know you’re the one I want to spend my days with.”

 

The words came out of him, steady as always but she could feel his tension. Was he afraid? Why?

 

“I know it might be abrupt or odd—”

 

“I want to be your friend.” It burst out of her, those words.

 

He stilled, staring at her before a smile finally spread his beautiful features. Had he really been so worried she would say no? “You do?”

 

“Yes.” She nodded, his smile infecting her lips.

 

His expression changed, though his smile wasn’t gone. It was like someone had called out to him but she hadn’t heard anything. He took a step back. “Dinner is almost ready. I’ll meet you down stairs?” He waited until she nodded, smiling again before disappearing down the hall.

 

* * *

 

Edward didn’t go straight for the kitchen where he knew Alice was fretting over the table setting being just right. She was trying to decide whether or not to stall since Jazz and Emmett were still out. She knew they were on their way back—always keeping tabs on her husband’s fate.

 

He went first to Carlisle’s study, hearing him and Esme there. Whisper as they might, he still heard every thought. There was a vampire in their territory. Not a group as had been thought, but just one. Carlisle had done some poking around the site in the woods where the bodies had been found. A group of hunters that had been camping in the woods. He had no doubts that a vampire had killed them but it hadn’t bothered to drink them dry. Tearing them apart instead and leaving them intentionally to be found. He heard Carlisle’s suspicions echo his own worst fears. It was a threat, a statement. Their newcomer wanted to say something.

 

Carlisle sensed him close and immediately tried to be more rational. If another vampire knew about Bella, it would have already made a move. But that still left the very possible chance that someone else wanted their territory around Forks. Unlikely, if it really was just one. _‘We’ll go out tomorrow morning, with Emmett and Rose, and track it down before it leaves another calling card,’_ Carlisle thought, his voice in his head just as soothing and calm as it was when spoken.

 

Edward nodded to the hallway and turned away from the study door. Emmett and Jasper were home. Rosalie was scolding her husband for coming inside a complete mess and sending him to clean up. Edward heard his brother’s delight at her harsh words, he liked when she yelled.

 

Edward was halfway down the hall to the kitchen when Jasper met him, smiling tightly. “You’ve done well,” he remarked, sampling the mood upstairs without actually going. And then his expression fell, brows pulled together and eyes turned up to the ceiling.

 

Something in the kitchen broke. “Emmett!” Alice shouted, sounding annoyed as though he’d been the one to drop it, but he was long gone from the first floor.

 

Edward made one step to follow Jasper to her before her call was echoed by Bella’s panicked snap from upstairs. “Edward!” she called it loud but it would have struck him like lightning even if she’d whispered it. His name, on her lips, in that tone. He was upstairs, facing her, in a split second. She was at one end of the hall, her shoulders pressed back and little fists balled. His eyes searched her for injury, but she wasn’t hurt. Her cheeks were flushed ever so slightly and her pulse raced—as much as he’d ever heard it race that is. She glared past his shoulder and he spun to stare wide-eyed at his brother.

 

Emmett had both hands up in surrender, woeful eyes on her and body bent slightly as though he might either turn and run or drop to his knees and apologize. He was a big man and he looked even bigger occupying that narrow hallway. Edward let out a low growl, not a threat, but a frustrated reprimand. Emmett was naked. Completely, utterly, bare ass, naked. His hair and skin were smeared in rainwater and mud.

 

He could hear the string of explanations, of apologies, of ‘oh shits’ running through his brother’s head. He’d forgotten about the skittish not-quite vampire in their house in his rush to his room and a shower. And there she was, in his path.

 

Edward parted his lips, intent on jarring Emmett into motion and out of his stupor when he felt the small weight of her hand against his back. She curled her fingers in the back of his shirt between his shoulder blades, just barely pressing at his spine. And all at once the moment struck him. She’d called for him. When she was unsure what to do, when she was threatened and anxious, she’d called. His chest swelled with pride unlike any he’d ever known until he was sure it would burst.

 

Rosalie appeared in the hallway, officially making the long stretch of hardwood crowded. She hissed and shoved at her husband, managing to push the big man a step back. “Come on! I told you when you went out that I was having our room painted!” she started on a rant.

 

Emmett immediately relaxed, a big smile spreading his lips and heavy shoulders shrugging. “You told me to clean up, woman! I can’t get in trouble for hurrying to do what you say!” He shot Edward and Bella one last apologetic look before reveling in his wife’s anger.

 

Bella’s hand uncurled from his shirt and dropped away. Edward turned slowly to look back at her. She was holding her hand, looking at it surprised. Had she not realized she’d touched him until she let go? He took a step to the side, still between her and the others in the hall, and spread his arm toward the stairs. “Dinner?”

 

She smiled a little, a thin gesture but it shone with honesty and he was relieved that she wasn’t completely freaked out. She went down the stairs ahead of him and he waited long enough to look back at the couple in the hallway. “Pants, Em. Pants,” he said tightly before following Bella downstairs. He tried not to smile. He had intended to be angry at his brother at least for the rest of the night, but she had touched him and there was no room in his heart for petty anger.


	7. Chapter 7

Dinner had gone surprisingly well considering only one of them could actually eat the food on the table. Alice and Esme insisted on setting out plates for everyone and all but Rosalie were game to pretend at eating. Jaspers thoughts had given Edward little updates all the time as to Bella’s mood. She was so careful at the table, in front of all of them. Nervous first, uncomfortable later, and eventually amused. Alice had been good at keeping everyone talking and for one gleaming moment it felt so possible that this could be their life.

 

And then Alice had a vision. It hit so fast that Edward jerked back in his chair, twisting away from her thoughts across the table.

 

His first feeling was a wash of relief because the vision had nothing to do with Bella. His second was a flood of shame because it had everything to do with Alice. She had seen herself losing a violent struggle with a vampire they had never seen before. Edward looked across the table to her and she looked back. He saw the panic and fear still ghosting across delicate, immortal features, and then she forced a smile. It was a sad sight, that desperate little smile. ‘Don’t ruin dinner.’ Her thoughts pleaded thinly. And he didn’t. They all went on pretending but now he knew that something terrible was waiting for them and this future might never be theirs.

 

After dinner, Esme asked Bella to show her the mural in progress and Edward followed them upstairs to give the rest of the family time to discuss Alice’s vision. He stayed in Rosalie and Emmett’s room with Bella even after Esme had gone, to watch Bella open paints and start brushing base colors for her creation.

 

He listened to his family downstairs easily from his place sitting against the wall. Their plan to hunt down the new vampire stood, now more than ever. Alice would stay behind with Jasper and Esme at the house with Bella.

 

“You’re distracted,” Bella said quietly, still painting.

 

He watched her from the side and smiled just a little. He wasn’t sure whether or not to tell her about the other vampire. He didn’t want to scare her. “Am I?”

 

She looked at him from the corner of her eye before turning her attention back to the wall and the streaks of orange paint. Tangerine. “I don’t mind,” she clarified quickly. “But after having your attention for a few months, I can tell when I’m sharing.” She immediately regretting her words. They sounded needy didn’t they? Or maybe conceded? Maybe he was regretting what he’d said before. Maybe now that she agreed to be his friend—

 

“No.” Edward interrupted her train of thought and she realized he was standing now, a step closer to her. “Those thoughts, that look—no. I meant everything I said.” He continued, waiting to let those words sink or maybe waiting for the truth of them to resonate with her. He let out a little sigh and took a step back. “I have to go out with some of the others soon. I’m worried about leaving you here alone.” His face pinched when he said those words. It didn’t feel right. He didn’t distrust his family. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to stay close to her either.

 

Bella nodded slowly. “Will I be alone?”

 

“No. Alice, Esme and Jasper will be here.”

 

“Should I be worried about them?” Her voice was quiet but firm and he realized she was looking for his honesty again.

 

He thought about it but shook his head. “No. But maybe stay up here, okay?” He added a thin smile that occupied one side of his mouth. “And try not to bleed on anything.”

 

Bella let out a laugh before she could stop herself, pressing it back and nodding. “Yeah, I’ll do my best. But the sunset might need some red…” she added, gesturing to the mural on the wall.

 

He took another step back, his smile pulling across his full mouth now. “Oh, I’ll be back before the sunset.”

 

“Promise?”

 

“Promise.”

 

She turned back to the wall and felt him leave, it wasn’t a series of sounds or shifting air, it was just an absence that came when he was gone. Odd, that she never noticed that absence before. They left the house and Bella was relieve to be left alone with her paints for the next couple hours. Around seven in the morning, Esme called up to ask if she needed breakfast. Bella had declined politely. She wasn’t used to living with others, not immortals anyway. She couldn’t decide if it was unnerving or comforting.

 

Around noon she got restless. She had started slowing down on her painting, a part of her not wanting to get to the sky until Edward came back. It was silly, wasn’t it? Why did it matter? He probably didn’t really want to see her paint it. She tapped the lid of the red paint tin. Deciding she was being stupid, she made up her mind to paint the sky. She picked up her brushes and the glass jar of murky water and left the room for the bathroom. She dumped the water, cleaned the brushes, refilled the jar, and then made her way back to the room. She put everything back in its place, picked up a clean brush and reached for the can of red paint.

 

Her hand landed on the edge of table and her head snapped to the side to stare at the spot where the paint had been. She looked around but it was gone and then a shimmer of light from outside caught her eye, drawing her toward the open window. There, somewhere between the trees, the silver tin sparkled back at her.

 

Bella hesitated only a second before putting her brush down and climbing out the window. She landed easily on the grass and moved quickly across the short yard and into the thick trees. “I didn’t know you were such a good thief.” She filled the silence, following the glint of silver deeper into the woods. She waited for Edward to answer but he didn’t, so she moved faster, chasing the flicker of light until it brought her out of the trees and across a clearing, almost to the other edge when she saw the can sitting there in the grass at the base of a tree. “Funny.” She was about to reach for it when she heard him behind her. She heard him. She didn’t feel him. Dread pitted in her chest. The absence wasn’t gone.

 

She looked at the little can of paint. It was open, smears of red on the tree. Her eye followed them up until she saw the word painted across the smooth bark. ‘Forever’. His terrible promise. “Stupid.” She berated herself and then turned slowly.

 

James smiled, always eager to flash fang. “Stupid, indeed,” he agreed. “What an interesting lover you’ve found, fountain.”

 

She didn’t move. If she ran, he’d chase. If she fought, he’d win. Her mind reeled, looking for an option other than the two that had always failed her. “You can’t take me.” Bella forced out the words, hands tight and curled like claws at her sides. “If you do—”

 

He didn’t move closer, just outside arms reach of her. “If I do, he will follow. They will follow.” He shook his head slowly, always wearing that awful grin. “You’ve played this well but I’ll never let you go. Not to waste yourself pretending to be human. Not to death itself. And certainly not to another vampire.” His head tipped to one side, those dark red eyes boring into her. “Do you think he’ll be able to resist your pulse for a decade? Two? Sooner or later, he’ll bite.”

 

“He’s different.”

 

“He’s cunning. Even if he doesn’t plan to now, one day, he’ll find out what he’s been missing in your veins.”

 

She shook her head hard, jaw clenched. He wasn’t making a move to grab her. He couldn’t, she realized. He didn’t want to risk the whole Cullen clan tracking him down.  “You should leave before they kill you.” Bella ground out, emboldened.

 

James leaned just a little closer and she held her breath. “Precious fountain. Someone’s already coming for you.”

 

She strained to hear what he already had, another body rushing through the trees. It was a relief, enough to have her exhaling, and then James slashed an arm through the air between them. The points of his fingers cut across her collar, splitting flesh from one shoulder to the other. Bella reeled back with a hiss, hands coming up to touch the red now gushing down her front. “What—”

 

“If you beg me to save you, I will.” He whispered with a laugh and then disappeared into the trees.

 

Her confusion lasted only a second, and then Jasper broke through the trees and jerked to a stop in the little meadow. He had come looking for an intruder but stopped when he picked up the smell of her blood, fresh and perfect, warm and singing out to him.

 

Bella shuddered where she stood, teeth bared and tears gathering in her eyes. “Don’t.” The word was caught between a command and a plea.


	8. Chapter 8

He leaned forward, lips parted and throat burning. Her pulse became a violent drum in his ear and try as he might, he could hear nothing else. Pain twisted his features because he knew what he would do. “Run.” The last of him that could, pleaded.

 

Jasper couldn’t remember if she had or not. All he remembered was swallowing that space between them and pressing his face into her split flesh. It was already healing. She struggled, one hand cutting at him with her fingers the way a vampire would, but a vampire wouldn’t have bled like her. Her arm broke when he twisted it back, spinning her with it to pin her back to his chest. She was speaking, screaming, but he couldn’t hear it clearly over the pounding of her pulse. And then his teeth sank into her neck and he forgot everything. Nothing had ever tasted like her. She reminded him of what water had once been, life itself when on the verge of death.

 

* * *

 

Alice collapsed when that bloody vision struck her, Esme already at her side, desperate to sooth. Alice let out a string of broken sounds before latching onto Esme’s arm. “Call Edward,” she cried in dismay. In her vision she’d left the house to stop Jasper, but in the end she had joined him at the fountain.

 

“Call Edward,” she repeated even when Esme had him on the phone. She didn’t have to explain more. He was coming home, but home would never be the same.

 

* * *

 

He had never run so fast in all his life. A part of him expected to find Bella cold on his dining table again, the way she’d been months ago when his life had changed. He cut through the house but didn’t stop. Bella wasn’t there and Alice’s thoughts told him exactly where he’d find her, what had happened and why his sister had done nothing to stop it.

 

He didn’t stop running until he reached the middle of that little meadow and when he took in the sight, his legs almost buckled.

 

Jasper was sitting in the grass with her bead body in his arms. It might have been loving if it weren’t for the gash in her pretty neck, the blood staining the front of her shirt and the red of his eyes. Edward had never seen eyes so red, or so sorry, or so happy. He shuddered at those thoughts streaming through Jasper’s head. He was sorry, so sorry, but he wasn’t going to let her go.

 

Before either could move, her heart came to life again, her body jolting in the cage of Jasper’s arms. Her eyes flung open and her chest rattled out sobs. Blood pushed through her veins again. Jasper moaned, actually moaned, and Edward snapped, rushing forward. As fast as he was, Jasper still got to his feet before he reached them. He held Bella tight with one arm curled around her waist and the other came up to dig fingers into her chest, sinking into her skin. Edward growled and grabbed at that wrist, pulling to keep Jasper’s fingers from digging any deeper.

 

And then he felt it, the quiet hum of Jasper’s gift trying to sooth the edge of his anger. “You’ll understand if you try.” His brother whispered and Edward looked down at Bella, caught between them. “I promise, we don’t have to hurt her. She heals from the bites. You saw,” Jasper continued, sounding nothing like himself, still trying to sooth and convince.

 

Emmett appeared in the trees behind Jasper, moving in slowly, silently.

 

Edward scrambled for a way to get her out of Jasper’s hold without hurting her more but knew that once he pulled, Jasper would hang on.

 

“Just one bite,” He urged.

 

Edward stared into those red eyes, shocked, furious, but not nearly as furious as he should have been. Did her blood make Jasper’s powers stronger? He felt his shoulders relaxing and his mind turning around the idea as though it could ever be okay.

 

He tore his gaze from those pits of red when he felt a small pressure against his chest, just beside his heart. He looked down to see her bloody hand there, curling fingers in his shirt. He caught her sad, tired eyes. ‘Don’t let anyone bite me.’ Even in her thoughts she was whispering, begging him to hear her. ‘Anything else.’

 

Edward shuddered, teeth clenching so hard that his jaw strained.

 

Emmet came up behind Jasper and Edward did the only thing he could. He grabbed her with his free hand and pulled, his other hand clamped down around Jasper’s and prying his hand back. Emmett grabbed at the small blond from behind so that he couldn’t advance or maneuver, trying to pull his other arm from around her middle.

 

Edward heard the bones in her spine and her ribs fracturing. She bit back a scream, the sound becoming wet and caught in her throat. Edward twisted with her and Jasper’s fingers tore into her side before he got her free. As soon as he registered her weight in his arms, Edward ran. Jasper howled but Emmett wouldn’t let him go and soon Rosalie and Carlisle were with him.

 

Edward started back for the house until the panicked uproar of her thoughts stopped him. She was still clinging to the front of his shirt, sobs bubbling up from her chest now. Her thoughts were still loud enough for him to hear, even see, but they h ad become incoherent and wild with pain and fear.

 

He needed to take her someplace where she’d feel safe, so he took her home and hoped her adoptive father wasn’t back.

 

It was the longest run of his life. Her thoughts were frantic, memories and nightmares bleed together. A group of vampires, a family like his but with red eyes, that kept her chained to the house. They tore each other apart over her eventually. In her terror she started imagining his family like that one. Her memory of Jasper’s teeth sinking into her neck, again and again, was so vivid that he could almost feel them scraping his skin.

 

He came in to her room through her window. He’d never gone into her house before. He’d told himself he wouldn’t until she invited him, but that was over now. He almost collapsed when he finally laid her down on her bed. His hand pressed against his temple, body knelt beside the bed and arms still beneath her. “Stop,” he begged. Her bones were healing, he could hear them, but it was her thoughts that had become his torment.

 

She was imagining him now. If he bit her, there was nothing she’d be able to do. “I wouldn’t,” he ground out in a whisper. Her heart was beating hard, working to repair her damaged body. The gash in her side was slowly healing but his and shirt was already covered in her blood. It spread into the bedspread beneath her. Her eyes rolled against half open lids, trying to think, trying to look around. She saw her room, realized she was on her bed, and then saw him. Her panic spiked anew and he cringed against those new, awful fears that screamed across her thoughts. ‘He’s going to bite me. He’s going to—’

 

“No,” he said it louder, body shaking at those thoughts. Her thoughts quieted at the volume of his voice, at the way it grounded her in this moment and not all of the ones that came before it in her life. “Please. You know I’m not going to bite you. You know I wouldn’t—”

 

Her mouth moved, choking on pain and blood before giving up trying to talk. Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Then why are you still holding me?’ she whispered across his thoughts, barely conscious and so acutely frightened.

 

He dropped his head forward and looked at her delicate hand still curled in the front of his shirt.

 

Her gaze followed his, surprise stunning her into near silence. She was holding on to him. He had stared, even though it caused him pain, because she was holding on. ‘Let go,’ she tried to tell herself but her fingers weren’t listening, clinging to the front of his shirt until she finally lost consciousness.

 

He shuddered with relief when she did, carefully pulling his arms out from under her. She had stopped bleeding, but he could still hear her bones healing, her pulse still erratic. And then he felt another vampire approaching. He was out the front door in a flash, standing on her porch when Rosalie burst from the trees and came up the driveway. She stopped a few long strides away from the house and looked at him. He was covered in Bella’s blood, shoulders pressed back and ready to fight her if he had to, but the Rosalie’s thoughts weren’t tempted by the blood. Her nose wrinkled in possible fury and she looked to his eyes to see if he’d bitten Bella. The wrinkle vanished when she found his eyes still honey gold rather than blood red.

 

“Emmett’s still sitting on Jazz,” she explained, always to the point. She paused and he heard her trying to decide what to say next. He almost smiled a little in relief that Rose was still, and always, Rose. She picked through a bed of rude and crude remarks to come up with the nicest, shortest sentence. “Do you need help?”

 

“No,” Edward answered quickly and she took a step back before he changed his mind. “Wait. Yes.”


	9. Chapter 9

She woke with a start and for a moment thought it had all been a horrible dream. Her ruined shirt clung to her skin, dried and sticky with blood. It was a small relief that no one had cleaned and redressed her while she was unconscious.

 

The hallway smelt like Edward and without thinking, she lingered there, breathing him in. She imagined him standing there, utterly still, unsure what to do next. He wasn’t in her house anymore, no one was, but she suspected there was at least one Cullen prowling the woods around her home.

 

Bella stripped down and showered. She cried, alone and under the spray of that water. She had been so naïve. Had she really though that James would stop hunting her just because she’d given him the slip for twelve years? Did she really think she could have a home with Edward, another vampire? No, that wasn’t fair. She remembered what had happened in the meadow. He hadn’t bitten her. He’d done exactly what she wanted—what she’d needed. And how was she going to repay him? James would tear his family apart just to get to her.

 

‘Forever.’ That was what James called what they had. He said that he’d known the first time he bit her that he’d never let her go. He thought she was made for him. He thought she made him special. He made her wish she could die.

 

She got dressed, hair still wet, and started shoving essentials into a bag. She had a wad of cash and a handful of credit cards and IDs in the back of her dresser. It felt like a hollow effort because she knew James would be waiting for her to run. It would be smarter to stay with the Cullens, even now. Maybe they would kill James before he ruined them all.

 

A few months ago she wouldn’t have hesitated to pit vampires against vampires. But the Cullens weren’t just any vampires because they were Edward’s family. He was the closest thing she’d ever known to a friend—to maybe more—she owed him at least this.

 

If James thought she’d stay, it might give her enough time to get away this time. She’d go south, someplace sunny and overly populated, like she’d done in the early years after she first escaped him.

 

She slung her bag over her shoulder and went downstairs. Edward would probably be close by, but he’d understand. After what happened today, how could he not? She couldn’t stay. It would wreck his family. She grabbed her jacket and opened the front door. Her adoptive father would think she’d run off. It would take him months to report it if he ever did.

 

She pushed out the front door, letting it swing shut behind her. The air was full of fat snowflakes, working hard to try to coat the world in white. She was going to miss winter.

 

She made it halfway down the long driveway before a sleek black car pulled up. It turned in the narrow space, blocking her path before the driver’s side door threw open and Edward got out. He was on her side of the car in a flash, looking her over quickly before taking careful steps closer. She’d noticed how he took care not to use that incredible speed against her.

 

“Good,” he said to her surprise and reached for her bag. “You already packed.”

 

She let him take her bag but her brow pinched in confusion. “I don’t need a ride. The bus station is close and—”

 

“Why would we take a bus?” Edward asked, walking back to the car and putting her back in the backseat.

 

“We?”

 

Edward opened the passenger side door for her and waited. “We’re leaving, right?”

 

Bella looked away and sighed before walking closer to him. It was easy to move closer to him, easier than anything had ever been in her life. “I have to go. He’ll make things worse for your family. He’ll…” She let out a breath and shook her head, one hand nervously shaking out the still damp strands of her hair. “How’s your brother?”

 

Edward looked like she’d punched him and then he laughed, a thin, miserable sound. “How can you even ask that?”

 

She looked down and felt the weight of exhaustion pressing down her shoulders. “Your kind don’t always handle my blood well…” She shook her head because it sounded too cold, too distant for what this had been. “I think when he came out to the forest it had been to save me. I think James knew that too.” She cringed. “There was a lot of blood and Jasper asked me to run.”

 

“Did you?”

 

She let out a short laugh. “No. I couldn’t outrun him and trying just would have made him chase. I tried to talk to him but…”

 

“I’m sorry,” Edward whispered and her eyes shot up to him.

 

He looked so guilty that it brought her another step closer, so close that if she leaned forward she’d be touching him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

 

“I shouldn’t have—”

 

“This is how it happens,” Bella said bitterly. “I really wanted this to work but…”

 

He nodded briskly. “Yeah.” He looked at her and then nudged his head toward the passenger seat now collecting snowflakes. “So. Where do you want to go?”

 

She hugged her jacket to her chest. “I’ll probably just catch a bus.”

 

Edward made a face, lifting one cheek and frowning. “I really don’t want to take the bus. Can’t we just take the car? I drive much faster than public transportation.”

 

She blinked at him for a second before shaking her head quickly. “Edward—”

 

“Don’t leave me,” he pleaded and it nearly broke her heart. She’d never realized her heart could break before. “Please. Don’t ask me to let you go.”

 

She wanted to argue, to save him from her fate somehow, but between her own greed to keep him close and her desperation not to hurt him, the only thing she could do was get into the car.

 

He closed the door soundly and came around the other side. She saw another car up ahead waiting until they were behind to start moving up the road. “Rosalie and Emmett,” he explained.

 

She tensed in the seat beside him and he glanced her way. “They want a vacation.” He lied and smiled when he knew she felt it. “I don’t know any vampire less tempted by humans.” He promised.

 

Bella smiled thinly. “I’m not human.”

 

He nodded and turned on the radio.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Do you know how to ski?”

 

Bella let out a little laugh. “No…”

 

“Do you like cocoa and lounging?” He tried again.

 

She leaned back into her seat. “I’m probably better at lounging than skiing…” There was an easiness to being with him, to being alone with him. He knew her now. He knew enough to know there were demons in her past. “He’s going to follow us,” Bella whispered.

 

Edward looked at her, easily maneuvering the road even as it grew snowy. “I need you to tell me about him. Alice saw him attack you before Jasper…”

 

Bella looked confused.

 

“Visions. She has vision,” he reminded.

 

She nodded slowly. “James. His name is James.” She saw Edward’s hands twist at the steering wheel, just careful enough not to break it. “He was always a hunter, even before he was a vampire. I was with another family when he found me. He’d been stalking in the area and took notice of the other vampires and how they didn’t hunt but their eyes were always so red. I think he was stalking them for months before he finally started to pull them apart. He had them turning on one another.

I was so desperate to get free of that family, that I never told them about him. I think he knew I wouldn’t. He was so careful with me in the beginning. He would smile at me when I spotted him, before disappearing when the others came. He would steal me and then leave me to be found, to convince one member of the family that another had tried to hide me away for their own personal blood bank. I was so stupid I actually begged him to take me away. I begged him to save me.”

 

Edward cringed. “That’s not stupid. You saw the monsters you were with, not the one that hunted you.” He hated the words when he said them, mouth pulling in contempt.

 

“He won’t stop,” Bella whispered, like he might be listening even now. “He’s too smart to attack more than one vampire outright but he’s patient enough to get what he wants.” She turned her head, laying her cheek against the headrest and watching Edward. He looked so miserable at her words that she wished he didn’t have to hear them. “You should drop me off. Anywhere. I wouldn’t hate you for it.”

 

He looked back at her and his features softened. “I would hate me for it.” He looked to the road again. “And I would miss you.”

 

‘I would miss you too.’ She thought and he smiled. She fell asleep in the car with him, her pulse so slow and heart so quiet that it was nearly unnoticeable.

 

He followed Emmett and Rosalie’s car up north. He’d told them not to come, to stay behind in Forks. But Alice had seen his fate, if he left Forks with Bella alone. She had seen his death, but the alternative was to let her go alone, and he couldn’t do that. Rosalie and Emmett had refused to leave him. The vampire would follow Bella. Alice would be safe with Jasper, Carlisle, and Esme.

 

They’d go to one of Rosalie’s favorite resorts in Canada, surrounded by a wilderness Emmett and Rosalie knew well. They’d take every advantage they could because while James thought he was stalking them, they were going to hunt him.


	10. Chapter 10

Bella stood in the snow, arms folded, bag slung over one shoulder, and looked at the cottage. Edward had explained that the resort a few miles away owned several private cabins around the mountain. Emmett and Rosalie had tried them all over the years but this was their favorite.

 

Bella had seen cabins before. She had lived in cabins before. This was not a cabin. This was a big, lodge inspired, wood house nestled into the side of a mountain. Rosalie and Emmett had arrived before them, Rosalie inside turning on the lights and heater while Emmett unpacked their car. The two worked in perfect unison, like they’d done this a hundred times before. She realized all of a sudden—that they had.

 

She looked over at the growing stack of luggage that had come with the blonde. Somehow, Bella doubted those dolce gabana suitcases belonged to the hulking dark haired guy tossing them around like they were marshmallows. Emmett put the last one on the stack under the awning and paused to look back at her. Bella hadn’t meant to look at him. She’d been looking at the luggage. Her eyes must have widened because he smiled this cocky sort of smile, winked, and went back to the car.

 

She scuttled two steps back and ran into Edward—actually ran into him. He stepped to the side even before she could, to give her that little distance. And it was little, because he didn’t move any further away, just far enough not to be touching her. “He’s harmless.” He promised, voice low.

 

She looked over his shoulder at Emmett once more. He was huge. “Yeah. You going to say Rosalie is harmless too?”

 

Edward managed a smile and a little shake of his head. “I wouldn’t want to get caught lying...”

 

Rosalie marched out of the house and onto the big porch. “Are you going to stay out there? Why did I bother turning everything on?” She shouted.

 

Bella smiled because her back was to the porch and the blonde wouldn’t see. “You still think this is a good idea?”

 

Edward nodded and so she sighed and turned around, marching up the steps and into the three story cabin. It had a living room with a vaulted ceiling and a fireplace big enough to stand in. The kitchen was entirely modern and stocked, the garage had snow mobiles and hunting gear, and the back had a Jacuzzi nestled into the snow.

 

“Rose and Emmett are going to take the sweet on the second floor,” he said on their way up the stairs. She gave his back a skeptical look. She hadn’t seen him talk to them since they arrived. Had they planned all of this ahead of time or was he reading thoughts. Was he reading hers? She waited as though he might answer, sometimes he had, but this time he didn’t.

 

He didn’t bother poking around the second floor and started up the stairs to the third. She followed, looking over the open railing down into the main floor. Emmett was already bringing in armfuls of firewood to fill not just the fireplace, but the deep baskets beside it. “They know I’m not going to freeze to death, right?”

 

Edward looked back at her, smiling a little but lifting and eyebrow. “You won’t?”

 

“Okay, yeah, if it’s THAT cold but it would take some serious exposure.” She followed him up to the third floor. It had a little sitting area and a table and two doors on either side of it.

 

She stood by and watched Edward open each door, not going in but considering the rooms before leaning his shoulder to one wall, beside a doorframe and nudging his head toward the entrance. “You can have this one.”

 

Bella walked over to him and the room, looking inside. It was nice. A plush bed with too many pillows, a dresser and chair. She turned to look back at him rather than going in. “Why this one and not the other?”

 

He smiled a little, looking surprised and then almost embarrassed. “You can have the other if you want.”

 

She suddenly realized they were standing close again. Why did that happen so naturally now? She played with the strap of her bag pressed into her shoulder, tapping it and then taking a step back. She walked across the little sitting room to the other doorway, but he stayed leaned to the other wall, watching her. She looked inside the second room. It wasn’t really a bedroom at all. It was full of furniture and sheets draped over them to keep the dust off.

 

She turned and he was still there, against the wall, beside the other doorframe. “I don’t really need a room,” he pointed out quietly.

 

She crossed the sitting area again and this time walked into the bedroom, tossing her bag onto the bed. “I’ll help you clean out the other one,” she offered. She noticed he didn’t follow her in, still leaned to the wall in the common area.

 

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” His voice was always so steady, so thoughtful. She left her bag on the bed and came back out. He straightened from the wall when she pulled the door shut behind her. She looked him over quickly before looking away, circling the room and then going to the railing again to look down at the first floor living room. Edward looked tired. Had looked tired since before they arrived. His eyes were dark.

 

“Are you hungry?” he asked, hands in his pockets.

 

Bella shook her head before looking at him sideways. “Are you?”

 

He looked instantly uncomfortable. “No.” He blurted out and she frowned because it was a lie and they both knew it.

 

“We need to go hunting,” Rosalie called from the entrance on the first floor, looking up at Edward. He knew what she was thinking and he knew she was right. They hadn’t eaten in too long. Emmett had been hunting only a few days ago but their own outing had been interrupted. He cringed, thinking about the night he’d carried Bella’s bloody body home.

 

Edward and Bella came downstairs. Emmett was crumpling newspaper to stuff under the stack of firewood.

 

“We could go one at a time,” Edward started to say but Emmett was already shaking his head.

 

“It’s not smart. Not if someone might be hunting us.”

 

Bella looked down at that, biting her lip uncomfortably.

 

“He’s probably not here yet.” Edward thought aloud—it was only fair. But he could hear their reasoning. They needed to be at least two outside the cabin hunting. One could stay behind with Bella and the others could come back if there was trouble.

 

“We won’t go far.” Rosalie said stiffly, uncomfortable having to explain herself.

 

“It’s why we pick this cabin. It’s far from the others and the actual ski resort and right in the woods. There’s wildlife everywhere out here.” Emmett went on, no problem explaining himself to anyone. “Hunting territory.” He smiled.

 

Bella nodded until she realized this plan left her in the cabin with the giant. Her mind started to race with the possibilities. What chance did she stand? He was huge and she’d seen enough of him to know that he was quick.

 

The back of Edward’s hand brushed hers and she looked up. It was the smallest of touches, barely there, it sent jolts of warmth through her skin. “Harmless.” He repeated, staring back at her.

 

She nodded stiffly. They were taking a risk getting involved, playing keep away from James. “Okay.” She nodded again and he smiled thinly before following Rosalie out of the cabin.

 

Bella stood there, looking around the big room while Emmett started the fire. She was about to retreat to her room when he broke the silence with that booming voice of his. “Closet,” he said. She turned to look at him where he squatted by the fire, poking at it to bring it to life.

 

“What?” Her voice was smaller than she expected.

 

His long arm stretched out, pointing to one side. “The closet there,” he said again and she skirted around the couch and toward it. What did he want from the closet? Did he want her to get in the closet? Her heart beat picked up just enough to really be heard and Emmett looked up at the sound of it. She opened the door and stared at the wall of shelves and old narrow boxes of board games.

 

“Pick one. I mean, I’ll win whatever you pick, so you might as well get to decide.” He smiled around the words, leaving the fire to clear the coffee table in the middle of the room of the decorative knickknacks.

 

Bella exhaled slowly and looked over the wall of games. Harmless. She pulled out trivial pursuit.


	11. Chapter 11

Trivia Pursuit was pushed to the side. She had lost because she wasn’t sure how he’d handle not winning and now he was shuffling a deck of playing cards. She took a breath and let it out. “They’ve been gone a while.”

 

“Not really.” Emmett dealt out the cards from where he sat on the floor.

 

“What are we playing?”

 

“Gin rummy.”

 

She almost smiled despite herself. “How old are you?”

 

He did smile. “Older than you,” he replied automatically before looking up at her where she sat on the sofa across the wide coffee table. “Wait… How old are you?”

 

Bella tensed and before she could decide whether or not to lie, he shrugged one big shoulder and finished dealing. “Thanks for playing. Edward cheats and Rosalie always wrecks the table when she loses.” He smiled like he thought it was cute and then turned over the first card. “You start.”

 

They played quietly for a while before she decided to break the silence. They’d gone through an hour of trivial pursuit without much conversation. He hadn’t done anything weird—other than deal out a hand of gin. “How long have you and Rosalie been with the Cullens?”

 

He looked up, a little surprised, and then smiled, leaning back into the couch on his side of the table. “Well, she was with them when I met her—when I turned. She was the first thing I saw. Or maybe just the first thing I cared to see.” He laughed, a loud, easy sound. “She wasn’t as nice then. I softened her up.” He sounded proud but she couldn’t tell if it was a joke.

 

“Soft?”

 

“Softened.” He corrected, nodding because it was an important distinction.

 

Another few cards came and went. She expected him to ask her something—to trade information for information, but he didn’t.

 

“Why did you come here with us?” She filled the quiet again, listening carefully, focused to find the lies in his words.

 

He traded out another card in his hand. “It made sense. Sending Edward and you alone wouldn’t be smart but we know you couldn’t exactly stay in Forks after…” His fingers stilled on his cards and his eyes moved over them to look back at her. “Jazz is sorry,” he said, voice quiet and weighted in pain.

 

She nodded stiffly and forced herself to look at her cards because she couldn’t handle holding his gaze any longer. “It’s the blood.” She admitted in a small voice. “It’s not easy to resist. Vampires that had been together for centuries have turned on one another for it.” She whispered, the fire cracking.

 

He grunted like he was unimpressed and she looked up, remembering him there that day in the field. He’d grabbed Jasper and held fast while Edward pried her away and ran. She wanted to ask if he hadn’t been tempted, but the answer could ruin her just as easily as it could give her peace. So she asked something else instead. “How many people have you killed?”

 

Emmett hesitated, watching the little brunet. “People? Like vampires or humans or both?”

 

“Humans?”

 

He smiled a little. “None.”

 

She looked up and wanted to call him a liar, but she could feel that it wasn’t. “None?”

 

He shook his head and then lifted an eyebrow. “How about you?”

 

“Humans?”

 

He laughed. “No, vampires.” He joked and kept laughing until it occurred to him to stop. He considered her again, thoughtful. She was small, but so was Rose when she wasn’t wearing those stacked heels. She was quiet, fast for a human, not quite as easily broken as one, and endlessly alive. But try as he might, he couldn’t imagine her killing a vampire.

 

She shrugged and then laid out her whole hand. “Gin.” She watched him from her spot on the couch, so tense that if he moved wrong she could jump over the back of it and make a run for the door. He could see it. She’d been watching him like that since Edward and Rose left. He understood, because it reminded of how Rosalie had once looked at him. Of course, Rose hid her fear in anger. She’d punched him through a wall the first time he tried to kiss her. And then run away.

 

He would have liked to make a big show out of losing, maybe shout and throw himself face down on the hardwood, but he wouldn’t risk scaring her. Instead he laughed and collected up the cards, dumping them in a stack in front of her. “Your deal.”

 

Bella relaxed a little for the first time since they started playing games. She picked up the cards and started shuffling. He hadn’t lied about not having killed anyone. Edward said she could trust him and she trusted Edward, that was enough, wasn’t it?

 

She relaxed a little more. That was enough. She dealt out the cards and won the next three hands. He laughed when he lost every time and somehow the amusement was always true. She smiled, small, and offered to play a different game.

 

“Hell no!” Emmett bellowed, dealing out gin again. Every time she dealt it was texas hold ‘em but every time he dealt it was gin again. “How did you become a card shark?”

 

Bella shrugged. “Spent some time in Vegas. Have you been?”

 

He laughed again. “Don’t think the climate would agree with me.”

 

She made a dismissive sound, surprising herself a little. “Nothing interesting happens outside or during the day anyway.”

 

He was about to ask more when he suddenly looked up and back toward the door. He considered something and then started putting the cards away. Before she could ask, she heard them coming home. Her hearing wasn’t as good as theirs but it wasn’t totally worthless either. She stood up first because she was pretty sure he’d wait until she did. She hadn’t missed how he sat himself on the floor instead of the couch and how careful but casual he’d kept his movements. “Thanks.” Bella was first to say before heading to the adjoining kitchen to get a glass of water while the door flung open.

 

Rose was first in, looking utterly pleased. She started in on a description of the woods and the wildlife they scouted on their hunt. She didn’t seem to find it odd at all that her husband was sitting on the floor.

 

Bella found bottles of water in the fridge and opened one just as Edward appeared. She smiled at him and he looked surprised for half a second but smiled back. “Everything went all right?” He asked, voice quiet like they couldn’t hear from the living room.

 

She nodded and took a sip, opening the fridge to look inside at the stacks of food. All things that wouldn’t expire anytime soon. “I like him.” She told the fridge. ‘He makes me feel normal.’ She thought. When she looked at Edward again he was standing a little closer and his smile was a little funny. “What?”

 

“Nothing.” He said with that smile but she could see he wanted to ask something else.

 

“What?”

 

“Do I make you feel normal?” He asked in a whisper and when her eyes widened and she almost forgot to swallow she saw his immediate regret. He shook his head, smile falling away and body sliding back a step. “I’m sorry. I-”

 

Bella reached out and caught his hand to keep him from retreating. She almost forgot to be surprised by that. It was so easy to touch him. It didn’t just come naturally, it came like something she craved. “No. Not normal.” She saw his disappointment and squeezed his hand, closing that space between them. Her heart beat wild in her chest, like it would jump out and run away itself if she didn’t flee. He stood so still when she leaned up on her toes, chest almost touching his. He’d be able to hear her heart like it was his own. Her mouth trembled for the rush of feelings she fought down. Her cheek brushed his. It was the closest she’d ever been to anyone by choice. “You make me feel special.” She whispered, so quiet, close to his hear, that not even the vampires in the living room would hear it.

 

When she drew back, she saw that his eyes had closed. They opened slowly and a small, almost shy smile pulled at his lips. It was fragile and she realized then she would have done anything to protect it. “So…” Bella swallowed another gulp of water and reluctantly let go of his hand. He let her, of course. “What did you have for dinner?”

 

He laughed in a gust and looked sheepish. “Moose.”

 

She nodded and walked him back to the living room, asking about the difference between moose and other wildlife. Was there a difference? It turned out there was and Bella ended up learning about wildlife preferences from 3 vampires with varying opinions. To no ones surprise at all, Rosalie was more interested in the hunt than the meal and Emmett looked more than a little proud of that.


End file.
